Is America Oversexed?

Do you think it is?

Do you think there is too much sex on tv and in the media? Is America beginning to think with it crotch instead of its brain?

Americans are Sex Fiends compared to the Japanese.

:)

and I mean children, one should not be getting hot bothered over it.

But it is fantasy and is not neccessarily reflected in thier behavior.

That stuff would gag a maggot. My ex brought some home after a trip through Nereita Airport, and I couldn't believe that stuff existed. I had spent one summer cleaning out student apartments in Boston, including the sticky porn they'd tired of and abandoned, and I thought I'd seen it all, but the Japanese have discovered perversions that had never occurred to me.

Sexuality is expressed in different ways in different cultures. If Americans are sex addicts, it's only because of the repression that the picklefaced right attempts to force on all of us. I sincerely doubt we're either more or less sexual than any other culture, although we're both repressed and bombarded with sexual images, a strange combination.

I didn't want to get busted for being overly descriptive, but yes they have "interests" that would shock even the most hardened prOn addicts in the US.

Strangely, semen shooting on a girl's face is just fine, but the actual organ is blurred out, as are female genitalia.

Bizarre.

and I am surprised at how relatively little interaction there is between males and females in public (or at the office) in this country. But you can walk into nearly any convenience store and find a whole array of magazines that feature pictures of lovely young women in very compromising positions. And there is even the occasional program on daytime TV where you can see *gasp* a woman's breasts! Janet Jackson, eat your heart out!

about sex scenes, explicit language and Parental Guidance.
Compare that to India. They make more movies than Hollywood every
year (actually the most in the world) and they don't even allow
kissing scenes! Now that is what I call prudish and repressed.

Lately I have seen more sex on PG rated movies than my bedroom LOL.
And I like sex every night!!

Is it the wealth? Then Abu Dhabi & Kuwait are more developed than the
US since their per capita income and wealth is higher.

Is it technology? Then China and India are developed since they both have
nuclear weapons, missiles, space craft, and manufacture every single item
produced in the US. More and more US white collar jobs are being outsourced to India, especially in computer software, medical
diagnostics and research, even legal briefings.

Is it longevity? Then some poorer countries in caucasus such as Azerbaijan have longer life spans than the US.

Is it street crime? Well....here US exceeds every other country in per capita murders. We also have one of the highest divorce rates.

Is it education? You may not be aware of this but more PhD's are awarded
at US Universities to foreign students than Americans.

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

Generally, according to various sources (the World Bank, the OECD, and the United Nations), developed countries include the following:


Andorra Germany Malta Sweden
Austria Greece Monaco Switzerland
Belgium Iceland Netherlands United Kingdom
Denmark Ireland Norway Vatican City
Faroe Islands Italy Portugal
Finland Liechtenstein San Marino
France Luxembourg Spain
Bermuda Hong Kong Australia South Africa
Canada Israel New Zealand
Mexico Japan
United States Singapore
South Korea
Taiwan
Turkey

I stand by my statement that "America is probably the most prudish, repressed developed country." Out of this list, Turkey might be an exception....

item imaginable and is probably the 2nd strongest country
militarily. But then may be World Bank looks at per capita
income. The paradox with that is that assumption is that
a country like China has a lot of poor people, but also a
huge pool of educated and skilled people amounting to many
times larger than every country listed as "developed" with
the exception of US and possibly Germany, UK and France.

which is as large as Germany's and France's combined.

and if you add up the number of college grads in those
two countries, you will find China has atleast twice as many.
Even India graduates more engineering degrees than the US.

But we are getting away from my main point, which is that the
criteria used by World Bank etc in defining who is developed
seems to be way out of kilter. Unless they are counting the
number of poor people as a percentage of total population as
the main criterion, then they are correct. But I don't see
how that is a valid yardstick.

China and India are good examples. They certainly do not
need foreign aid, or technical assistance, since they have
institutions far more advanced than 90% of the countries
listed as developed by world bank.
So what is the real meaning of being on that list?

on a statue.

I think Ive posted this before but your post reminded me of it.

or more accurately, suffering from an infantile obsession with sex and titillation.

Look at the "Girls Gone Wild" commercials. Never seen anything LESS erotic in my life.

I love sex and nudity, but not in the puerile, cheesy way it's served up here.

Crass, tasteless and mean-spirited.

Off-topic, but labeling "frat boys" as crass, tasteless, and mean-spirited is crass, tasteless, and mean-spirited. Not to mention bigoted. Ever been the member of a fraternity?

Thanks for your consideration.

Signed,
A fraternity member

Not-so-major university in Colorado.

Trust me, we were crass, tasteless, and occasionally mean-spirited.

But (on the whole) we got better over time.

The same can't be said of all frat boys. Not to mention that Schimpanski dragged the curve down.

But labeling the entire group that way is an ill-informed generalized bias. Am I to assume that you think stereotyping is a good practice?

I do not feel I have to justify my reasons (but am willing to do so if you do not believe me), but I do not think that the group of men with whom I spent my undergraduate years are any worse than the average university attendee in these respects, and quite a bit better in others.

Sad that they would be judged by the actions of their more drunken members, but when you are harrassed by drunken people outside fraternity houses at night, it leaves an impression.

It's not useful for real discussion.

I also think we've got a language thang going here. "Frat boy" is not synonymous with "fraternity member" -- I think we all know the difference. But . . . young men who have recently left home DO tend to extremes of behavior and often shed (at least temporarily) some of the values they were raised with.

On the whole, the guys I went to undergraduate school (me included) with needed to do some growing up -- hell, that's what we went to college to do.

And what we did.

But to carry the attributes of a stereotypical frat boy into adulthood -- crassness, narrow-mindedness, an unearned sense of superiority and entitlement -- and especially to carry these attributes into the White House: then you've got a disaster on your hands.

America is not oversexed or undersexed, but has almost a split personality when it comes to expressions of sex.

Like how the country was up in arms about Janet's nipple but most media didn't comment on the sexually agressive (man as hunter, woman as prey) kind of dance they were doing, which is becoming the norm. That bothers me more than any nipple.

we go and monitor everything they watch on T.V.? Perhaps we are repressed, but it sure comes out all over the place, doesn't it?

Myself, I have yet to figure out how a specias could evolve so that the exposure to things related to reproduction could have a profound negative effect on children. So my instinct is to think that perhaps we arent approaching children quite right about the subject.

etc

there is a statistic that the average child sees thousands of murders on TV, movies and video by the teen years but parents think a little glimpse of teat will scar them for life

i don't get it :shrug:

to control the way children are exposed to it so as to mantain a status quo of attitudes.

so at 5 they can learn hollywood version of sexuality

I think we may be able to learn a couple things from "old" Europe about nudity in the media though

exactly for that reason. we have killing and anger and hate as the major emotion we are feeding the kids. further it is thru out the new cartoons they make for the kids. my house, none where the characters are always angry or stupid. the two ingredients in abundance in cartoons today

with angry or stupid characters?



Kids these days. :eyes:

puppies being born, kittens, hamsters, etc., but I've been a mother for some 32 years and raised 6 children. My youngest is almost 10. It seems to me they are healthiest (emotionally) when they are allowed to have a childhood and not be exposed to humans having sex until they are older. I'm convinced that what separates us humans from the animal kingdom is the fact that we can "think before we act" - we can delay our urges whereas animals act on impulse. I present sex to my children as something sacred between two adults - not something used to sell cars or other products. I teach them to wait for a committed relationship and get to know a person first before jumping into bed. I believe when you have sex before knowing someone, you actually arrest the development of real intimacy and substitute the sex act for it.

What I think is wrong with our society is that so many have been taught that sex (and their bodies too I guess) is dirty and shameful and something to be snickered at. It's the forbidden fruit, so they obsess over it. This is especially true of the evangelicans who warn about unclean thoughts and fornication on Sunday and then get caught sneaking out of a motel room with a hooker on Monday. I think that until we realize that we humans can take sex to a higher level, can give it real meaning, we will continue to be a pornographic society.

Take ol'...wha'his name...Jimmy, oh, heck the preacher who went on and on and oooonnnn about the evils of fornication and sexuality. Ends up he's been cavorting around with prostitutes.

The psyche is like a long balloon. (pardon the obvious reference...sometimes a long balloon is just a long balloon) Squeeze down on one end and the other end expands. Push something down from your conscious mind and your unconscious tends to find other ways to express it.

"Don't think of the white elephant." will not leave your mind a blank. Most likely, if you are an average person, you will think of the white elephant. Now imagine us telling ourselves over and over..."don't think about sex."

A much healthier way to deal with it is to have frank, open, relaxed attitudes about it. If that miracle were to ever happen, you'd never have to cover your kids eyes again. They would already be informed and you would be utterly at peace with it.

an adults world of sexuality. they are dealing with other things at that time in their life and they reject, dont like all this shit. they ask not to see it. it is the adult like you that insist this child see it regardless of the consequence to the child and then you suggest this will make him much happier later in life to be going thru a stage he/she isnt ready for.

so tell me how productive it is to give our little boys the woman protrayed on the screen as a whore sellling her body to some creep man. or how healthy is it for the little girl to watch some man rape woman after woman. how about our children watching women using sex to gain what they want and men using sex to control woman

and you suggest this makes a healthy child.

go back to the child development books. how the children gain the foundation for a healthy sexual life in later years is by gaining confidence and self respect for themselves. for the male child to have a healthy relationship with mother and daughter healthy relationship with father. open respectful, kind, loving nurturing.

they do not need tv and hollywoods view on sex to teach them. as we continually say, it is part of our humanness, they will come to it on their own. i allow my children to figure out their sexuality without the influence of the perverted and retarded that have yet to have a healthy relationship. i dont need tv to teach my boys to not be respectful of women and view them in a less and degrading fashion, and if i had a daughter i would certainly fight hard to teach her to respect herself above all else and not allow any man to have power over her in a degrading fashion

My cousin's 9 year old was playing with her Ken and Barbie dolls in the back seat of their car.

Annie pipes up and says, "Mom, Ken is looking under Barbies skirt."

Instead of freaking out and assuming that some perv is messing with her daughter or that Annie has seen this on TV or some such, Janet says, "Tell Barbie to inform Ken that that is inappropriate behaviour and that he should stop that right now."

Now Annie might have been looking to get a rise out of her mother, or to push boundaries about what is acceptable. Janet let her know, by example, what the appropriate response should be; a level head and a firm boundary. Not just on the mother/daughter level, but for future reference when little Johnnie at school decides to try to sneak a peek.

I'm not saying: Let your children see anything they want. In fact I'm advocating a more hands-on approach that requires that each situation be dealt with individually rather than by blanket censorship (which will only serve to make them more curious, in case you didn't actually take the time to read my post and think about it).

As for children being exposed to "things they aren't ready for". Any child who has grown up on a farm can tell you all manner of things about procreation that you would probably say they aren't ready for. Given context, which is what parents are there to provide, most information does little lasting damage to children.

You seemed to have read a lot more into my post than I intended to put there. Perhaps you are demonstrating some of the results of repression I was discussing in the earlier posts. Good luck with that.

and then later teenage years in sunny calif in the 70's, near naked bodies everywhere..............big thumbs up. i would like my children to be in a healthy free enviroment and i am suggesting to you, that is not what we have created for our youth today. panties for our little five year old girls that says eat me on them

my children ran naked til they decided to put on clothes. still have a 7 year old that wants the fresh air on his body at times, and streaks thru the house.

you example was of the mother interaction, which is what us parents are asking to be allowed to do.

dont assume i am repressed, dont assume i repress my kids. you dont have a clue. what i want is for them to have the freedom and enjoyment in their sexual life as i have. what i see this society creating for them is a challenging time to reaching that. actually, not my kids. i take care of my kids. they will be fine

a funny story. i do know what you mean. at a lake in spring ducks everywhere. a mother with her two little girls, me with my two little boys. one duck going after another and finally gets on top of it. the mother flipping out throwing rocks at ducks to try to make the ducks stop. i am busting up so hard almost pee my pants. she wasnt even getting near the ducks and no way they were going to stop

but that is the mothers thing, not really your business or mine. not our place to decide for that mother. she gets to raise her kids, regardless how you feel

That would be NO! lol

...I don't know about America...but I"M pretty oversexed.

-P

I think America is pretty uptight about it actually

it is not a natural healthy sexuality we are teaching our kids today. but then we are doing this with a lot of things pertaining to our kids, so wtf, we parents will just have to deal with it wont we.

when a career dude goes into a school and tells girls a good opportunity for money is a stripping career and there are fathers and a whole lot of men on this board say that is a good thing,.......that about answers your question. lets just make all our little girls sluts at the age of 8 and be done with it

America is perverted when it comes to sex.
We treat skin as a crime.
Elementary teachers are afraid to touch their students. Parents don't touch their own kids enough for fear of spoiling them, thereby increasing the risk of making that child an Emotional Ice Person when they grow up. (See G. H. bush)
We are a social species. We need touch to be and to remain emotionally healthy. But we have laws against normal touching even. Some call it sexual abuse, even when it is not.

We are a nation of cold blooded hypocrites, which leads to the atrocities we are doing in Iraq and else where.

But it doesn't like to think so, because it's terrified of sex.

On one hand, it's fairly repressed in its views of sex and sexuality and on the other hand, Sex is everywhere in the media. It's like its okay to look at but not okay to do. I don't even think that made any sense.

Because our culture considers sex filthy, we produce the world's largest pornography industry that reduces sex to it's most base elements. The violence that pervades our culture is likewise revealed through pornography that targets women as objects of male aggression.

about porn, but it would still exist - although the quality of the movies may increase.

Most porn does not target women as objects. The biggest companies, Wicked and Vivid produce some very couple-friendly stuff.

It is all titillation to get ratings, i.e. sell products. We aren't teaching our children about sex by boiling sexuality down to a consumer tool. The subject line is a provocative way of saying that we don't have enough intelligent discussion of human sexuality in our media. Do only attractive actors and actresses have sex? No!

Every person is a sexual being (or a potential one) to some degree. We need to avoid condemnation or fetishization of sex to maintain a healthy balance.

Then we might be oversexed.

No.

No. No.

That the people that are obsessed with sex the most are having it the least. When people have sex often, they actually tend to think about it less.

you usually got more than you need or handle.

And by "America", I mean "me". ;)


MDN

you have children.
I personally think America isn't oversexed, especially compared to some European countries. But my mother constantly complains about the sex on TV and the negative effect it has on my younger siblings.

Violence, big cars, violent entertainment, breast enhancements, commericals for penile enhancements, homophobia (caring about homosexuality when you're not!), censorship, religious hypocracy, and much, much more...all add up to a furious attempt to compensate for a failure to engage in sex without massive guilt. People either don't have enough sexual contact or, if they do, they are guilt ridden. Thus, the various forms of channeling the sexual or shame energy into other forms to "ease the tension."

It is oversexed in some ways. But it is also so ridiculously prudish that it isn't even funny. I can't really explain beyond that.

over-inundated with sexual imagery in the attempt to sell us everything, yet also over-repressed about nudity and human sexuality.

we get all worked up over a breast exposed on TV, when if the breast were not such a taboo fetish and instead seen as a natural part of the body, it would not be such a big deal.

I am an artist who has done a lot of figurative work, and who has worked as an art model for years. Whenever people learned I modeled nude or painted nudes, they would instantly assume it was some sex thing, when the truth was naked people are pretty damn unexciting when you look at them for hours every day.

Nudity should not be a "dirty thing" - that same taboo is what makes it a valid marketing tool and also what makes it attractive to those for whom it is forbidden.

And as much as we do not want our teenage kids to have sex, we have to remember that most of us at that age tried to be more adult and/or sexy to our peers; it's part of growing up. That said, this is not an easy issue at all in that I do not want kids to experiment with sex, but I think they should do so safely if they do.

For example, a friend was concerned about Sex Ed in his daughter's school and only wanted her to learn about abstinence and not practical matters like safety. I asked him if he would rather see his daughter end up pregnant or infected with a deadly disease if she made a judgement mistake, and mentioned that he needs to talk with her to let her understand that any action of hers will have consequences she will need to consider.

in an immature way. The 'news' people on my local station act like grade-school boys smirking and simpering anytime they can put some 'news' on that has to do with getting naked. I don't know how many times they had to show this poor guy who was rescued from the flood during the latest rainstorm and had his pants literally ripped off of him. They showed that and showed that and showed that, just so they could blur his privates and talk about how he was 'exposed'. The smirking and immaturity of the report made me want to :puke: I just felt like screaming "GROW UP"!!!

We're repressive and prurient all at the same time.

There's far more sex on TV overseas and less obsession with it overall.

stop going on channel runs all the time. Except for homosexual TV, SpongeBob Square pants and his ilk.

silly me but blowing people away just doesn't do it for me.

If we showed more loving tender relationships including sex maybe we wouldn't act so crazy when a tit is exposed for football fans.

KL

Here's a short summary, as performed by the Surveillance Camera Players:
http://www.notbored.org/reich.html

the kind of sex that is life-affirming, that middle-aged, and imperfect the kind of sex that tells you you're okay
the kind of sex that is deep or lasting
the kind of sex that comes with 20+ years of marriage
the kind of sex that would do this undermines commercialism

commericalism needs us alienate
needs us insecure
needs us unsatisfied
needs us to watch

what we get is 13-year olds presented as "objects"
we get unattainable body images
we get celebrities' sex lives
we get blind desire
because that keeps us buying shampoo/People Magazine/bowflex

A better explanation would be that sex is under-sexualized, over mechanized sensationalized and commercialized. I swear I can't understand porn videos that simply portray the mechanical pumping of cheap sex. It reminds me of working on an assembly line in a factory for some reason.

Teen culture is way too sexual to be healthy. I've seen TV shows with 6th Graders complaining that he/she is the only one in their class without a boyfriend/girlfriend.

Teen fashion (especially from teen pop icons) is also quite disturbing.

Our attitudes about sex being dirty and forbidden is what drives society to sexualize children in the first place.

Our culture would be much better if we could:

Separate nudity from sex, and became more comfortable with our own skin.

Separate sex from love and didn't automatically pair bond with the person they happened to have sex with.

Came to know "new relationship energy" for what it is - a biological phenomenon which has little to do with long term compatibility.

Came to see sexual orientation as a continuum rather than an absolute. I think most homophobia is caused by the rejection of your own feelings.

Came to see monogamy as a character trait rather than an ideal. People who are not by nature monogamous would then be more likely to bond with like people or at least people who were OK with that.

Came to realize that new sexual encounters are one of the most exciting aspects of our lives - and have an outlet for that in our society that would not endanger our primary relationship (May Day orgies anyone?)

We are very obsessed with sex in this country. What else explains how we
behave as though Adultery is the worse sin? Killing thousands is okay, but
god forbid you should stray sexually. Other countries, including many
Catholic countries, are far more relaxed about sex than we are.

It took me years to learn what you've captured in this post, mongo. Thanks for sharing it.

The only thing I would add is an observation about how the rules differ for men and women. When we (as a society) start affirming women's sexuality as enthusiastically as we do the male libido - then we will have really achieved something.

Here's to the day when sex isn't a dirty little secret... :toast:

also undersexed (repressed) regarding healthy physical relationships and acceptance of sex as a natural instinct that can allow people to reach their full human potential.

A lot of what many would call sex is actually violence against children and women.

pre-teens sold thongs with sexual innuendo on them.
5 year old girls in beauty pageants made up to look like sluts.

After all, we live in a country where some very influential nutters find sexual overtones in cartoon characters such as Spongebob and Teletubbies.

Oversexed? Who knows? Weirdly sexed? Certainly among a certain portion of the population.

I think we are oversexed for sure.

Yeah you can say that there is less sex here than europe or what not but why do we always have to compare ourselves to europe? We consider ourselves so developed and advanced yet we speak and appeal to the most uncivil and primal corners of our nature. Think with your head, not with your loins.

which is why something as inconsequential as a tit gets the fundies ruffled.

Here I clicked on this thread hoping that it would contain some nudity.

but that's what you get from repression..
Anyone find my sig line offensive?

:(

There are some fairly good comparative studies in the Journals.

In summary, for heterosexual couples, the frequency of sexual activity in the US falls in the lower 50 percent when compared internationally.

Middle aged couples (my age group) tend to engage in it 3 to 4 occasions less each month than similar aged couples in some european and asian countries.

However, we do talk about it alot. Sexuality is clearly much more of a political issue here.

We seem unable to move beyond a snickering, out-behind-the-woodshed, 8-year-old's nudge-nudge wink-wink view of sex to an actual adult view of sexuality. 8 year olds find nothing quite so hilarious as someone (else)'s butt being involuntarily exposed. I really think that's what half our media is - stuck in an infantile sex fixation.

There ARE movies dealing with actual adult sexuality in an adult manner, but jeebus, are they ever hard to find.

angry about sex. I personally think that they'd go broke if sex wasn't soo taboo in this country. Thats what happens everytime you try to ban something, the stock in the smut you're pushing just skyrockets, hence Prohibition and the drug war.