The general things I would conclude about all these topics are these:
- Society should strive to have everyone happy.
- Society is filled with social norms.
- These social norms seem to exist because either:
  - the benefit of the individual: at the time the social norm came about, they were the best-available method for solving problems that affect the happiness of an individual.
    - Examples
      - Social norms against incest prevent the pain that would be felt by the child.
      - Social norms against underage sex prevent the problems felt by the underage person.
  - the benefit of the group: they're a product of social evolution: groups that adopted the social norm tended to do better
    - Examples
      - Catholic social norms prohibiting contraception lead to the creation of lots more Catholics.
      - norms against homosexuality might lead to more births, since homosexual men / women would be led into heterosexual relationships that would be more likely to produce offspring.
- As time goes on, some / all of these social norms may no longer be the best way to make everyone as happy as possible
  - Examples:
    - Nowadays, social norms against homosexual relationships seem to cause more pain than they prevent.
- People have certain "buttons" that get pushed that make them feel good.
  - Examples:
    - physical affection
      - getting a massage
      - hugging someone
    - mental affection
      - being familiar with someone.
      - having someone smile at you
      - having someone think you're great / special / important
- Those "buttons" aren't always sophisticated enough to tell who / what is pushing them.
- So you can end up with a situation where you're having a bunch of your "buttons" pushed by someone that society would not approve you having a relationship with.
  - Examples: incest, bestiality, homosexuality

Obtaining consent

2015.10.15 - NYT - Sex Ed Lesson: ‘Yes Means Yes,’ but It’s Tricky

Consent from the person you are kissing — or more — is not merely silence or a lack of protest, Shafia Zaloom, a health educator at the Urban School of San Francisco, told the students. They listened raptly, but several did not disguise how puzzled they felt.
“What does that mean — you have to say ‘yes’ every 10 minutes?” asked Aidan Ryan, 16, who sat near the front of the room.
“Pretty much,” Ms. Zaloom answered. “It’s not a timing thing, but whoever initiates things to another level has to ask.”

The “no means no” mantra of a generation ago is being eclipsed by “yes means yes” as more young people all over the country are told that they must have explicit permission from the object of their desire before they engage in any touching, kissing or other sexual activity. With Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature on a bill this month, California became the first state to require that all high school health education classes give lessons on affirmative consent, which includes explaining that someone who is drunk or asleep cannot grant consent.

I think the process of obtaining consent could be done in a much better way.

Age of consent

This is a popular news topic (relationships that violate the age of consent), I'm guessing because a lot of people read these stories.

On the one hand, the argument for having a high age of consent is pretty clear:
- If you read the history of the age-of-consent laws quoted below (taken from the book "Lawtalk"), young women were often getting coerced into really abusive situations when the age of consent was lower.
- There was also a higher teen pregnancy rate, which seems to exacerbate poverty, I'm guessing because the parents have less time early in their lives to learn a specialized set of skills which command higher wages (eg being a doctor / lawyer / programmer).
- Men will often be willing to pay women a lot of money for their time when they are young, which could lead women to underinvest in their job skills and become used to an easy lifestyle, which can lead to unhappiness once they get older.
- Lower ages-of-consent seem to have been present in societies where women were married at those lower ages, marriage was necessary for any kind of relationship, marriage was guided by the woman's parents, and divorce was prevented via social stigma / prohibition (?). Thus the women had some kind of idea of the life they could expect from the decision to marry (based on the earnings / status of the prospective husband). Whereas nowadays those things (protections?) are no longer present.
On the other hand, the current system seems to have problems:
- It seems to be natural for men and women to start to find each other more sexually attractive once the opposite sex becomes sexually developed (ie capable of having children). When that happens seems to vary from person to person, but it seems to generally start around age 13. My understanding is that that was a common age for marriage in the past.
- The current system seems to be getting a lot of people in trouble, just as the marijuana and homosexuality laws were getting a lot of people in trouble.
  - Men and women (but mainly men) are being prosecuted as pedophiles for having relationships with 16-year-olds, and images of people of that age is considered 'child pornography'.
I suspect there is a way to get the benefits we want from a high age-of-consent without incurring the costs of the current system.
Moving to a new system might be slow / awkward for society in the same way that shifting to the social acceptance of homosexuality / marijuana was slow / awkward.
Lawtalk: The Unknown Stories Behind Familiar Legal Expressions
- This book discusses the history of age of consent laws:
- Click here to expand...
  The age of consent is the age at which a young man or woman can give legally effective consent to be married or to engage in sexual intercourse. Although the term had been around in legal writing at least since the early seventeenth century, it exploded into general usage late in the nineteenth.
  Generally speaking, a marriage entered into by a person who has not reached the age of consent for marriage can be annulled, and sex with a person who has not reached the age of consent for sexual intercourse is a crime (usually referred to as statutory rape). The legal details, however, can be very convoluted, as a Georgia high school student named Genarlow Wilson learned in 2004 when, at age seventeen, he was charged with "aggravated child molestation" for having received fellatio from an accommodating schoolmate two years his junior. Under Georgia law at the time, the minimum sentence for this act was ten years' imprisonment without the possibility of parole, followed by lifetime registration as a sex offender and lifetime restrictions on where he could live. Under the same law, if the pair had engaged in sexual intercourse instead of oral sex he would have been guilty only of a misdemeanor; and if in addition the boy had been the same age as the girl (fifteen) they both would have been guilty of misdemeanors--each one for having "raped" the other. As it was, Wilson served almost three years in prison before the Georgia Supreme Court narrowly decided that his sentence was so disproportionate to the crime as to constitute cruel and unusual punishment, and ordered him released.
  The separation of sexual maturity from legal capacity to consent to sex is the result of a cultural revolution that occurred not so very long ago. In earlier times, puberty signified marriageability. In England, a valid marriage could be contracted if the boy and girl had reached anni nubiles (Latin, "marriageable years": twelve for a girl, fourteen for a boy). Any girl who had reached this age was capable of legally consenting to sexual intercourse, a basic component of marriage. (Canon law, which governed marriage, allowed parents to marry off their children beginning at age seven, but then the children had the option of disaffirming the marriage upon reaching the age of twelve or fourteen. In practice, marriages at even younger ages were not unknown.)
  This principle was reflected in one of England's earliest statutes, the wide-ranging First Statute of Westminster (1275). Among other things, this promulgation by Edward I codified the law on "ravishment of women" by proscribing forcible rape or abduction of females of any age, and intercourse with any maiden under the age of twelve. In the words of an official nineteenth-century translation from the Anglo-French original, "The King prohibiteth that none do ravish, nor take away by force, any Maiden within Age, neither by her own consent, nor without; nor any Wife or Maiden of full Age, nor any other Woman, against her Will."
  In the sixteenth century, Parliament increased the penalty in rape cases to death (the penalty for felonies); and "for playne declaracion of Lawe" added, "That yf any person shall unlawfully and carnally knowe and abuse any Woman Childe under the Age of Tenne yeeres, everie suche unlawfull and carnall knowledge shalbe Fellonye." But while that made it plain that sex with a girl under the age of ten would be treated as a rape, the statute left it unclear whether previous lesser punishments were still available for cases where a child had reached the age of ten but not the age of twelve. The law was in this confused state when it was brought to America by the colonists; as a result, after independence some states pegged the age at which a girl could consent to intercourse at ten, others at twelve. In England the matter was clarified in 1828 by a statute continuing the death penalty for forcible rape and for carnal knowledge of a child under the age of ten and explicitly designating carnal knowledge of a child of age ten or eleven as a lesser crime punishable by imprisonment "for such Term as the Court shall award."
  In a general revision of England's criminal laws in 1861 the death penalty was abolished for such crimes, reducing the maximum sentence to penal servitude for life, or in the case of carnal knowledge of a girl aged ten or eleven, to penal servitude for three years--though in all cases the court had discretion to order a much lighter sentence. As with all previous statutes on the subject, this involved no fundamental change in thinking about the crime: for at least six centuries, nothing had seemed more natural to lawmakers than that a child upon reaching sexual maturity thereby acquired the status of an adult so far as sexual matters were concerned.
  But within the next half century a host of social, economic, philosophical, and political forces would combine to revolutionize the law. Industrialization and urbanization increasingly removed young women from the watchful eyes of their parents, at once freeing them to mingle unchaperoned with young men and subjecting them to unwelcome sexual pressures in the workplace. The romantic concept of children as the embodiment of innocence and purity mingled with Victorian notions of sexuality as a dangerous impulse in need of suppression (see COMSTOCKERY). The feminist movement and the woman suffrage movement, begun at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, called attention to the legal victimization of women. The temperance movement, and particularly the founding of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1874, called attention to the brutalization of women by men.
  Many of these threads came together in what came to be called the "social purity movement," which was concerned, among other things, with what was perceived as an epidemic of prostitution and "white slavery." This concern represented a mixture of compassion for poor girls and women forced into prostitution by economic necessity, fear that "pure" women were being abducted or inveigled into lives of debauchery, and concern that "bad" women were luring virtuous young men into sexual vice. In England in 1885, the influential journalist and social purity advocate William Thomas Stead, with the support of Salvation Army Chief of Staff Bramwell Booth (who had helped his father found the Army a decade earlier) and the redoubtable social activist Mrs. Josephine Butler (wife of the canon of Winchester), investigated the London sex trade. Among other things, Stead contrived with several confederates to "purchase" a thirteen-year-old virgin and at least contract for the purchase of several more teenage virgins, all ostensibly for sexual purposes.
  The resulting expose, published as a week-long series in Stead's "Pall Mall Gazette"--and brilliantly promoted the preceding Saturday by means of a printed advisory that prudish readers should avoid reading the Gazette for the next few days--caused a sensation. An introductory essay argued for "raising the age of consent"--a theme to which the series repeatedly returned--and at once the topic was on everyone's lips. The government was forced to respond, and within three months an act for "Protection of Women and Girls" had been whisked through Parliament. Among other measures, the act raised the age of consent from thirteen (to which it had been grudgingly increased from twelve a decade earlier) to sixteen. As his reward for exposing the complicity and involvement of powerful people and the legal system itself in the sex trade, Stead was convicted at the Old Bailey of child abduction and indecent assault and served three months in jail.
  Stead's series was reprinted in the United States, where it proved as effective in selling newspapers, and almost as effective in arousing public sentiment, as it had in England. Suddenly people began to notice--and to be concerned--that the age of consent for girls in most American states was ten; in a few, twelve; and in Delaware, presumably because of confusion over the old canon law, seven. (In Arkansas the relevant criminal statute explicitly referred to the transition point as "the age of puberty"; but the state's supreme court held that an indictment for carnal knowledge of a twelve-year-old girl who allegedly had not yet reached puberty could not stand, for the common law had set twelve as the age of "legal puberty" so as to avoid the "indecently inquisitive" process of requiring a girl's underage status to be "proved by actual inspection.") In 1885 the WCTU established an official Social Purity Department to campaign for, among other things, a higher age of consent. Within five years, legislators in twenty-four states had responded to pressure from a wide range of sources by raising the age of consent for girls--most to fourteen, but a few to thirteen, fifteen, sixteen, and in one case eighteen. Opponents railed that such laws would put innocent boys at the mercy of conniving girls, and efforts were made to repeal the laws. But the activists pressed on, gaining higher and higher ages. By 1920 the lowest age of consent in the land was fourteen in a single state; in no fewer than twenty-one states it had reached the age of eighteen.
  By that time, World War I had rung down the final curtain on the Victorian era. The 1920s brought unprecedented freedom for young people, especially in the cities. It was the flapper era, the Jazz Age, the decade of speakeasies and bathtub gin and the Charleston. It was only in this post-Victorian atmosphere that a blunt expression acknowledging the sexuality of teenage girls--and wryly commenting on the legal dangers they now posed--could have taken root. The stage was set for the invention of a new word: jailbait.
- Click here to expand...
  Jailbait (or jail bait) is a slang term for an adolescent girl who has not yet reached the legal age for sexual intercourse. It is a vivid warning that no matter how attractive or provocative the girl might seem to a man, if he attempts any sexual intercourse with her he could find himself behind bars.
  The earliest appearances of the term found by lexicographers occur in the grittily naturalistic stories and novels of James T. Farrell published in the first half of the 1930s. Farrell's writing, which began in earnest around the time that he entered the University of Chicago in 1925, was based on his experience and observation of life in the city's Irish working-class neighborhoods and was noted for its documentary quality; it is therefore probable that the term existed as street slang, at least in Chicago, in the 1920s. Probably by confusion with the primary meaning of the term, jailbait also acquired a secondary meaning referring to a person, especially a young man, who seems destined to land himself in jail. The original meaning, however, remains by far the most common today.
  The unknown person who coined this expression had a keen instinct for language, creating a graphic and disturbing metaphor by a novel juxtaposition of the plainest of words. The expression quickly became a staple of hard-boiled American fiction, in lines like "Look, even if I wasn't on the level, yuh think I'd be stupid enough to mess with jail bait?" and "You're wasting your time, Gran'pa, I'm jailbait."
  In real life, however, the term is best used sparingly and with considerable caution: if intended or perceived as a slur upon the character of a girl or of girls in general it is offensive. For example, one of the allegations against a teacher accused of sexual molestation and harassment of a thirteen-year-old student was that he had "referred to Barbara as 'jail bait,' or 'San Quentin jail bait' in front of students, his friends, band parents and student teachers."
  The fundamental principle underlying this expression is the separation of sexual maturity in the biological sense from sexual maturity in the sociological sense. This concept is now so firmly established that it is somewhat surprising to realize that it is barely a century and a quarter old.

Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desirehttp://www.amazon.com/Sex-Punishment-Th ... dp_product
- this book also apparently discusses the history of age of consent laws
Examples of other cultures' social norms
- Click here to expand...
  David’s father, Kenneth, was an anthropology student at the University of Pennsylvania who, under the tutelage of the prominent scholar Napoleon Chagnon, made his first trek to the Amazon in 1975. “I was older than the rest of the team, and a little more arrogant,” he says. Exasperated, Chagnon rid himself of Kenneth, sending him to the most remote part of the jungle.
  There, he stumbled upon Yarima’s tribe. He was enthralled and fascinated, and made so many return trips that the Yanomami came to regard Kenneth as one of their own. “The head man of the village said, ‘You know, have a wife — you’ve been here for so long.’ ”
  In 1978, he was offered Yarima, who was then about 9 to 12. Good was 36. He saw no real problem.
  “Living down there, of course I didn’t care, and the Yanomami didn’t care,” Kenneth says. “Our culture is obsessed with numbers.”
  He says that the Yanomami don’t have what we consider marriage; instead, they betroth their girls — even while in the womb — to tribesmen for later consummation.
  Kenneth says that a girl can refuse her betrothal, but he knew Yarima had feelings for him, because she watched for him always, brought him food, ran down the riverbank when he was approaching.
  Kenneth has always taken umbrage at the obvious question: How old was Yarima when their union was consummated? “PBS asked me that once, and I said, ‘You can be damn sure that she was the age of consent in most states and many countries around the world,’ ” he says. “Which I think is 13. The cultural age is what’s important down there. Don’t I have the right to do this or that in another culture?”

Misc articles

2015.01.26 - VICE - I Slept with My High School Teacher, and It Sucked
2015.01.28 - VICE - I Slept with My School Teacher, and It Was Great—but the Aftermath Was Terrible
2015.11.07 - NYT - Hundreds of Nude Photos Jolt Colorado School
- The revelation has left parents outraged, administrators searching for missed clues, and the police and the district attorney’s office debating whether to file child pornography charges — including felony charges — against some of the participants.
  (...)
  Students at the school described a competitive point system that classmates used to accrue photographs. Different point values were assigned to different students. Students who collected naked photographs gained points by adding these desirable children to their collections. Isaac Stringer, a junior interviewed outside the high school who said he did not participate in the photo-sharing, called the boy with the largest collection “the pimp of pictures.”
2015.11.14 - NYT - Prosecutors Weigh Teenage Sexting: Folly or Felony?
- JustWondering New York 8 hours ago
  What have we become? I'm 63, the tail end of the Woodstock Generation, went to more than one rock concert where casual nudity was the norm. We've developed technologies that teens can use to explore the sexuality and with the added bonus of freaking their parents out. Looking at the school superintendent and that police chief reminded me of high school and pearl clutching panic attacks at students going bra-less, protesting the war, marching and protesting in the late 60's early70's. Yes, the photos will potentially follow the kids, yes we need to honestly educate them of potential consequences - not felony convictions (and the thousands of dollars the families of these will have to pony up for lawyers) - but someone, someday asking "Is that YOU?" in a professional setting, the reality is that its not likely to matter either. A felony or misdemeanor on the other hand... The only thing I would like to tell police, prosecutors, school officials and others is just this - GET A GRIP. If there is one historical constant it is that the new generation MUST find something that will utterly freak their parents out. The internet and smartphones are now that vehicle and our kids are running with the ball.
- I think the issue here is that the police / prosecutors / school officials are simply responding to the incentives they've been made subject to; they have very strong incentives to punish this behavior, and no incentive to allow it.
2015.12.13 - NYT - Alan Dershowitz on the Defense (His Own)
- In the interview in his Manhattan apartment, Mr. Dershowitz said Mr. Epstein was often surrounded by young women, but none struck him as underage. “I never got involved in his social life,” he said.
  However, in late 2005, around the time when Mr. Dershowitz and his family were vacationing at Mr. Epstein’s home, Palm Beach detectives were sifting through the trash outside. Acting on a tip, the authorities were investigating whether women working as assistants to Mr. Epstein were finding teenage girls to give him sexual massages. As the inquiry unfolded, detectives spoke with girls, some of whom were 15 or younger.
  In a motion filed that month, Ms. Giuffre claimed that she and Mr. Dershowitz had sex when she was a minor aboard Mr. Epstein’s plane and at the money manager’s homes in New York, New Mexico and the Virgin Islands. She also asserted that Mr. Epstein had “sexually trafficked” her to other powerful friends, including Prince Andrew, the Duke of York. Buckingham Palace rejected the claims against the prince.
2015.12.22 - CBS - Docs: Texas teacher, student "became physical" on Africa trip
- Photo of the teacher:
- The response to her behavior seems out of proportion to what she did.
ThailandGuru.com - Good guys trying to help often get burned
- So, what are prostitutes planning? Usually, they have no plan, except to find a rich foreign guy willing to support them. They live day to day. They don't make much effort to think proactively. They just follow and react to others in their environment, passive. If they have a plan, then it is to sit at home and watch TV all day, gossip with their friends, and go shopping. (...) For awhile, I gave them credit for having the courage to venture out into farangland in order to expand their horizons. However, more often than not, it's just to find someone to support their lazy, ultra laid back lifestyle, and take them away for some exciting and free (indeed, profitable for them) vacation adventures.
- Although the author of this page doesn't bring it up, his description of the mentality of prostitutes seems to be a good reason to discourage sex until people have attained a certain age: it helps prevent people (both women and men) from getting sucked into a lifestyle which may be easier / more-pleasurable in the short run but is more painful over the long run. If a person has at least finished high school, they'll hopefully have formed the work habits necessary to hold down an office job.

Contraceptives / Birth control

For men

Injectable birth control

2016.11.01 - Atlantic - The Different Stakes of Male and Female Birth Control
- The side effects in this most recent study were severe in some cases: 21.6 percent of participants got mood swings or some other kind of "emotional disorder," 38 percent had an increased libido, and 23 percent felt pain at the injection site. The crazy thing, though, is that most men wanted to continue using the injectable birth control—more than 80 percent of them said they would choose to use it.*
- http://www.conrad.org/news-pressreleases-121.html

For women

IUD

NYC Dept. of Health - The IUD
- The IUD is a small, T-shaped birth control device that a health care provider inserts into a woman’s uterus. There are two types – one contains hormones, the other does not.
- What are the benefits of the IUD?
  - You can “get it and forget it.” Once you have the IUD, there is no daily pill or action that you need to take to prevent pregnancy.
  - It is more than 99% effective at preventing pregnancy.
  - It can work for a long time, so if you know you don’t want a pregnancy within the next several years, it may be a great option for you.
  - It is safe for most women and teens, whether you’ve had a baby or not.
  - No one will know you have an IUD, unless you tell them.
- What are possible side effects of the IUD?
  - Some women may have spotting in between periods. This usually goes away within the first 3-6 months.
  - Some women with the non-hormonal IUD experience heavier periods.
  - Some women with the hormonal IUD may stop having periods while using it. This is a common side effect and is totally safe. For many women, this is an advantage!
  - Some women may experience cramps and backaches.
- How does the IUD prevent pregnancy?
  - The IUD works primarily by preventing sperm from fertilizing an egg.

The decline of sex

2015.10.18 - NYT Story - On Tinder, Off Sex

I found the profile of a man whose name is probably Matt and told him I’m new to this Tinder thing and asked him how it works.
“You match with a bunch of people, no one ever messages each other, and no one ever has sex,” he responded.

(...)
In my imagination, the sex I have with each of them when I’m riding my bike home from work or when I’m stuck in traffic on the freeway or when I’m otherwise far away from myself is epic. It is all dark rooms and brick walls. Aggressive and gentle. It is the kind of sex that makes a person fall in love instantaneously.
Except we never have sex. And we never fall in love. We fall into almost love and then life takes us away from each other. And without that memory of skin against skin to connect us across distance and time, we become, once again, strangers.

Homosexuality

I am by no means an expert on this stuff, but since people talk about it so much I have spent some time thinking about it. As with everything else I say, please excuse anything I say that's uninformed; if you let me know how I'm mistaken and I find you convincing, I'll revise what I've written. I am no stranger to changing my mind on things.

Q: Is homosexuality natural?

My short & simple answer: Yes, although it depends on what you mean by "homosexuality" and "natural".

My long & complicated answer: It depends on what you mean by "homosexuality" and "natural".

It seems to me that some people use "homosexuality" to refer to homosexual behavior, while others use "homosexuality" to refer to the feeling of attraction to the same sex (which may or may not lead to homosexual behavior). And some people use "natural" to mean "the longstanding status quo", while others use "natural" to mean "something you're born with". If you're asking whether homosexual behavior is the longstanding status quo in the United States, then the answer seems to be "No, it isn't". If you're asking whether some people's attraction to the same sex is something they're born with, then the answer seems to be "Yes".

I've gotten the impression that conservative groups are correct when they say that homosexual behavior can be developed in people who otherwise wouldn't be drawn to behave that way (eg prisons, ancient Greece). I suspect many LGBT people realize this. For example, I've overheard pro-LGBT people talk about the idea of heterosexual people "going gay", and if you Google "should go gay" you get more than a million results. I also suspect they purposely avoid mentioning this idea in the media because it complicates the argument that LGBT people are "born that way". I've heard it said again and again that social movements need to have a very simple message to be effective.
Related article: A lesbian mother feels nervous about her daughter picking up her habits

At the moment I suspect the LGBT groups are correct that it wouldn't make a big difference to the functioning of society if all formerly-heterosexual people became open to bisexual behavior. For example: ancient Greece, modern US prisons, and the modern pornography industry are all known for having heterosexual people engage in homosexual behavior, and it doesn't seem to have caused any serious social problems like those caused by the drugs opium/PCP/crack cocaine/meth (as far as I know). I suspect that expressing this view in public would make a lot of heterosexual people in the US very uncomfortable, which is probably why you don't hear it from LGBT groups. It honestly makes me feel pretty uncomfortable, probably because I grew up in a very different system.
Related article: A gay guy arguing that not all gay people are born that way, and that's OK

I suspect the conservative groups are correct that allowing the erosion of their conservative social norms within their own group could be bad for the prospects of their religion/race (eg orthodox Jews are in the same situation), and I suspect that they're correct that if the law of the land forces them to interact with people of a different social world, they'll have a harder time enforcing their conservative social norms among members of their own group.

So, with all that in mind, it seems like the gay-rights issue is just a tug-of-war between 1) gay groups that are working from an inborn motivation to be free to live in a way that will better satisfy their desires, and 2) anti-gay groups that are working from an inborn motivation to keep the status quo (for the preservation of their race/society). I don't think there's a "right" or "wrong" here, just like I don't think there's a "right" or "wrong" about whether a lion is able to catch the zebra he's chasing; I think whichever group is more powerful is going to win out, and that's the way things will be from then on. If I had to guess, I'd say the gay groups will get their legal rights, and the anti-gay groups will continue to do their thing like the orthodox Jews do: they won't be able to enforce their status quo via the law, but they'll still have peer pressure, which is very powerful.

re: being born with a genetic variation
I had a classmate in elementary school who was male but acted in a very feminine way (more feminine than many of the girls). It seems unlikely to me that this behavior was a result of his environment after birth (although idk what his family environment was). I haven't encountered him in any way since elementary school and so I can't say for sure that he ended up identifying as homosexual, but if I had to guess I'd say he probably did. I remember finding females attractive as early as preschool (which is actually as far back as I can remember anything), and so it seems plausible to me that someone born with a genetic variation could identify as being homosexual as early as then.

Q: How does the social-acceptance of homosexuality affect heterosexual men?

For some reason in the US it seems many straight guys feel a need to bash gay people whenever they get a chance, and after noticing that some things about widespread homosexuality actually benefit straight guys, I started to ask myself whether it was rational for heterosexual men as a group to be so negative toward homosexuality.

My guess at the moment is that the widespread acceptance of homosexuality that we see nowadays is a fantastic situation for heterosexual men. From what I've seen, homosexual men seem (on average) to groom themselves better than heterosexual men, they tend to take better care of their bodies (eg not getting fat), they don't seem as intimidated by beautiful women, and as far as I can tell their facial/body structure seems to be the same as heterosexual men. The point I'm getting at: if they were forced to have girlfriends and fake their behavior b/c of social norms (like in the '50s), it seems like they'd be tough competition for heterosexual men. On more than one occasion I've seen a physically-fit, well-groomed, tall gay guy and thought, "Thank God I don't have to compete with that guy for women".
A few years after I came to this conclusion, this video came out with the same idea: CollegeHumor - Gay men will marry your girlfriends

Misc unusual sexual topics (incest, bestiality, etc.)

Bestiality

2012.06.12 - YouTube - VICE - Donkey Sex: The Most Bizarre Tradition

Incest

2015.12.09 - VICE - Talking to a Man Who's Been in Love with His Sister for 20 Years

Prostitution

2014.09.04 - Economist - More bang for your buck: How new technology is shaking up the oldest business
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/ ... -your-buck

Telegraph - Welcome to Paradise
http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/proje ... -paradise/

2014.02.20 - BBC - Mega-brothels: Has Germany become 'bordello of Europe'?
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26261221

Sexual Harassment / Assault

This is something that the media talks about a lot, so it's something that I've thought about.

Articles:
Slate - My Molesters: Why I never told my family or the police
People - Bill Cosby Under Fire
NY Times - Abuse Verdict Topples a Hasidic Wall of Secrecy
Why Rape Isn't Like Sunburn

The Guardian - A letter to … the girl who accused me of rape when I was 15
Below is the account of a man who accused his female pastor of sexually assaulting him
- http://www.erikcampano.com/why-episcopa ... isconduct/
- http://www.columbiaspectator.com/opinio ... al-assault
Vocativ - Street Harassment: Sidewalk Sleazebags and Metro Molesters
2015.06.23 - The Washington Post - Why many rape victims don’t fight or yell

When bullets are flying and blood is flowing, you had better have some really effective habit learning to rely upon. That’s why combat training is rigorous and repetitive – to burn in habits of effectively firing weapons, executing combat formations, etc.

But what if you’re being sexually assaulted and there’s no effective habit learning to fall back on?

What if you’re a woman and the only habits your brain cues up are those you’ve always relied upon to ward off unwanted sexual advances – like saying, “I have to go home now” or “Your girlfriend will find out”? Those phrases, and passive behaviors that go with them, may be your only responses, until it’s too late.

Countless victims of sexual assault describe just such responses. Too often police officers, college administrators, even friends and family think to themselves – and say out loud – “Why didn’t you run out of the room?” “Why didn’t you scream?”

- I know exactly what the author is talking about; I've had that experience myself (although not with sexual assault).
2015.09.27 - NYT - On the Front Line of Campus Sexual Misconduct

Last week, the Association of American Universities released the findings of a sexual misconduct survey that culled data from more than 150,000 undergraduate, graduate and professional students at 27 universities. In it, nearly one in four undergraduate women said they were victims of sexual assault or misconduct. At Harvard College alone, 16 percent of female seniors said that during their time at Harvard they were subjected to “nonconsensual completed or attempted penetration.”

During the winter of 2015, the University of Michigan conducted its own study to try to quantify the frequency of sexual assault. The Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Misconduct found 22.5 percent of undergraduate females and 6.8 percent of undergraduate males said they have experienced nonconsensual kissing, touching or penetration. “In most cases, the unwanted sexual penetration occurred primarily after verbal pressure, and under the influence of drugs or alcohol,” the study said.

2015.09 - NLU Delhi - Untitled.
- Someone posted a link to this on Facebook.
2015.11.03 - New Yorker - St. Paul’s School and a New Definition of Rape

We are in the midst of a significant cultural shift, in which we are redescribing sex that we vehemently dislike as rape, and sexual attitudes that we strongly disapprove of as examples of rape culture. For centuries, the legal definition of rape was intercourse accomplished by force and without consent. Many states have done away with the force criterion, and no longer require proof that the victim physically resisted the assailant or failed to do so because of reasonable fear of injury. With force absent from rape definitions, there has been increasing pressure on how to define consent. In the past several years, on many college campuses, consent has become affirmative consent, according to which not obtaining agreement before each sexual act is sexual misconduct. California and New York require affirmative-consent policies at schools receiving state funding. Some college campuses have gone even further and defined consent as not only positive but “enthusiastic” agreement to have sex. Anything short of that becomes sexual assault. It is not surprising that Judge Smukler, presumably influenced by these ideas, would say that, even though lack of consent had not been proven, this didn’t mean that the girl had, in fact, given consent. Far-fetched at the time, Catharine MacKinnon’s 1981 statement, “Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated,” is effectively becoming closer to law, even if it is not on the books.

2015.12.21 - Slate - The Nice Guy Fallacy
2015.12.21 - Slate - The Infamous Reddit “Ask a Rapist” Thread Is Now the Subject of a Research Study
2015.12.21 - Slate - Youngest New Delhi Gang-Rapist Released After Three Years in Prison
2016.01.02 - Quillette - To Rape is to Want Sex, Not Power
2016.01.13 - Jezebel - Was I Raped?
- Dave, a friend-of-a-friend from college, was the guitarist and band Svengali, and my lack of vocal talent became a bit of an issue. So each Sunday morning, before band practice, I would meet Dave at his apartment in Jersey City so we could practice the songs (Mary J. Blige’s My Life, Erykah Badu’s, Tyrone, SWV’s Love Like This) before wasting time and money rehearsing in the studio.
  Dave had made a play for me from day one. I turned him down decidedly.
  One day, at his apartment before rehearsal, he asked, sincerely, why I wouldn’t have sex with him. I told him, sincerely, that I wasn’t attracted to him in the least. And that was that. But Dave wanted to negotiate.
  “Do you have to be attracted to me to have sex with me?” he asked, looking down at his guitar.
  “Well. Yeah,” I said. “That’s usually how that goes.”
  Dave looked up at me, his face brightening: “How about you just have sex with me as a favor.”
  (...)
  Here’s the thing. There were times with men, before and after Dave, that were very similar to that day in his apartment. The difference was: these were times when I knew I wanted to have sex with the guy—but I still played coy in the same way. I played the cat and mouse game, enticing the man to do exactly what Dave had done—beg.
  In these instances—even though, again, I gave no verbal consent, I gave in. And it was different, because I wanted to give in. More importantly, it was my intention from the very beginning.
  So inadvertently I taught those men that pressing for sex could sometimes end well for both parties. I was the queen of saying things like, sex on the first date? I’ve never done this before. Or things like, I don’t know, maybe we shouldn’t. I have contributed to a culture that produced guys like Dave as a result of being shaped by that culture. I’m sure that, before me, there were women who wanted to have sex with Dave and still swatted him away for an hour beforehand. Women aren’t conditioned or taught to have a pure and simple, yes-I-want-to-fuck-you approach to sex. At least, I wasn’t. The unequal power dynamic of the cat-and-mouse game hurts both men and women.
2016.09.21 - NYT - Longing for the Male Gaze
- MI: The author suspects that being an attractive woman and having to deal with sexual harassment is better than having cerebral palsy, not getting any sexual attention, and being treated like she's mentally handicapped.
  - "I also do understand what it feels like to get attention from the wrong man. It’s gross. It’s uncomfortable. It’s scary and tedious. And in certain cases, traumatic. But I still would much rather have a man make an inappropriate sexual comment than be referred to in the third person or have someone express surprise over the fact that I have a career. The former, unfortunately, feels “normal.” The latter makes me feel invisible and is meant for that purpose. I like it when men look at me. It feels empowering, not disempowering. Frankly, it makes me feel like I’m not being excluded."
- I'm not sure what I think about that.
- The one thing that struck me is that I've kind of had a similar experience; I had acne in high school and know what it's like to feel "invisible" and to not have anyone pay any attention to me, and since then I've experienced what it's like to be highly desired and have lots of people asking me for favors, trying to scam me, etc. It really sucks to deal with that kind of bad behavior, but (at least in my case) it's still way, way better than when I wasn't in demand by anyone. I guess the big issue is: how bad does the bad behavior get? How often do you have to deal with it? How big of an impact does it have on your life?
2018.09.25 - NYT - Op-Ed - Padma Lakshmi: I Was Raped at 16 and I Kept Silent
- I understand why both women would keep this information to themselves for so many years, without involving the police. For years, I did the same thing.
- Soon I began to feel that it was my fault. (...) I’d always thought that when I lost my virginity, it would be a big deal — or at least a conscious decision. The loss of control was disorienting.
- When I was 7 years old, my stepfather’s relative touched me between my legs and put my hand on his erect penis. Shortly after I told my mother and stepfather, they sent me to India for a year to live with my grandparents. The lesson was: If you speak up, you will be cast out.
- These experiences have affected me and my ability to trust.
- Some say a man shouldn’t pay a price for an act he committed as a teenager. But the woman pays the price for the rest of her life, and so do the people who love her.
- I think if I had at the time named what happened to me as rape — and told others — I might have suffered less.

People don't always tell the truth

The idea that some men will lie to avoid being punished for their sexual behavior seems to be widely discussed and accepted as fact by practically everyone in the US. I've seen this behavior firsthand and accept this as a fact myself.
However, the idea that some women will lie about sexual matters to avoid being punished for their behavior, or to use the social environment as a weapon against a man, or to secure some other advantage, seems to be less-discussed (in the news, on Facebook, etc.), possibly because it's perceived as a less-serious issue (rightly or wrongly, I don't know).
- I have been in a situation where a woman behaved in a way to suggest that she was open to talking to me, we had a few conversations on friendly terms over several weeks, and then she later faced scrutiny by her social group for it, and she then totally changed her behavior and seemed to deny having been a willing participant.
- I have also noticed that women seem to often prefer making advances in a way that allows them to maintain full deniability.
  - Example: If a woman wants to talk to you she may just hover nearby while twiddling with her cell phone.
  - Example: My understanding is that some dating experts say that women do the same thing with sex.
- None of this is meant to suggest that most reported sexual assaults aren't genuine. If I had to put money on it, I'd bet without hesitation that the vast majority of reported assaults are legitimate. Men clearly seem to be, on average, the more-aggressive ones when it comes to sex, and people often act like idiots / overstep socially-determined behavior-boundaries, especially when drunk or in a position of power.
- All I'm saying is that 1. an assault investigation and 2. the response by "the court of public opinion" probably shouldn't be a rubber-stamp process where the defendant is immediately assumed to be guilty, because that will incentivize people to accuse others.
- One of the tragedies of this social issue is that the two sides involved experience the issue in very different ways.
  - For example, when I spent some time hanging out with a particular female friend of mine I was stunned at how some other men treated her. I had never seen men act like that in front of me before, but I imagine she must deal with it all the time.

Examples

Disclaimer: The fact that an article is listed below does not mean that I am convinced that it is true, but it does mean that I find the story plausible / not ridiculous.
2005 - Alexander Hamilton (biography by Ron Chernow)
- Benedict Arnold famously betrayed the Continental Army in their fight against the British, and his wife was somehow left in a situation in which she needed to lie about her knowledge of the treachery to escape punishment.
- Hamilton hurried to Washington a letter just received from Arnold in which he blamed American ingratitude for his betrayal and sought to exonerate his wife: “She is as good and as innocent as an angel and is incapable of doing wrong.” Mrs. Arnold was still behaving bizarrely. After Varick ushered Washington into the room, the sobbing woman refused to believe it was the general: “No, that is not General Washington. That is the man who was a-going to assist Colonel Varick in killing my child.” Washington sat by the bedside and tried to console the hysterical woman. Washington, Hamilton, and Lafayette were all duped by Peggy Arnold’s command performance. They attributed her sudden raving to grief over her husband’s traitorous behavior. To their gullible minds, this behavior was proof that she must be a blameless victim of Arnold’s perfidy. In fact, she had been privy to the plot, having acted as conduit for some of her husband’s correspondence with the British, and she played her mad scene to perfection. For all his supposed sophistication about womanly wiles, Hamilton was completely hoodwinked by Mrs. Arnold’s brazen charade. As always, he was hypersensitive to female charms, and well-bred ladies in distress especially brought out his chivalry. In a letter to Eliza that day, one can see how taken Hamilton was with Peggy Arnold:
  "It was the most affecting scene I ever was witness to. She for a considerable time entirely lost her senses…. One moment she raved, another she melted into tears. Sometimes she pressed her infant to her bosom and lamented its fate, occasioned by the imprudence of its father, in a manner that would have pierced insensibility itself. All the sweetness of beauty, all the loveliness of innocence, all the tenderness of a wife and all the fondness of a mother showed themselves in her appearance and conduct…. She received us in bed with every circumstance that could interest our sympathy. Her sufferings were so eloquent that I wished myself her brother to have a right to become her defender."
  Hamilton was totally credulous in the face of this designing woman. Instead of being wary in a wartime situation, he converted Peggy Arnold’s situation into a stage romance. His tenderness for an abandoned wife may have owed something to his boyhood sympathy for his mother, and this episode prefigured a still more damaging event in which he evinced misplaced compassion for a seemingly abandoned woman. Washington issued a passport to Mrs. Arnold that allowed her to return home to Philadelphia. She made a stop in Paramus, New Jersey, where she stayed at the Hermitage, the home of Mrs. Theodosia Prevost, whose husband was a British colonel sent to the West Indies. Once the two women were alone, Mrs. Arnold told her friend how she had made fools of Washington, Hamilton, and the others and that she was tired of the theatrics she had been forced to affect. She expressed disgust with the patriotic cause and told of prodding her husband into the scheme to surrender West Point. The source of this story, printed many years later, was the man who was to be Theodosia Prevost’s next husband: Aaron Burr.
- I would have used the same theatrics if I were in her situation.
2014.10.31 - AL.com - The bedroom intruder that made Antoine Dodson famous tells his side before their celebrity fight on Sunday
- Give us your side of the story.
  Cooper: "Me and him was cool. Me and his sister had a little fling. I did not hop on a trashcan and enter the window. I was at the house chilling one day, just me and Kelly. She tried to do something I wasn't down for yet. All the sudden she got mad and bipolar and started throwing stuff, trying to fight me. So I won't lie, I did hop out that window. (laughs) A mad woman? You don't play with them.
  "Next thing I hear on the news is all that. People from Huntsville and Lincoln Park came directly to me when they heard about it, and I told them it's not true. But it didn't matter because word spread like wildfire. I left. There was no point in me being in the area anymore. I won't tell you where I moved, but I moved."
  (...)
  Did you speak with Kelly after the incident?
  Cooper: "Oh man, I lashed at her. I asked her, how could she lie like this? She said she didn't want to talk to me, blah blah blah, she just went off. My heart was racing. It was like the Twilight Zone. I didn't know what to do. I called my mom."
  (...)
  Why did you feel that you had to leave if nobody snitched?
  Cooper: "People were still looking at me. They whispered. They snickered. Some people wanted to fight. I don't need that in my life. All I want to do is live my life peacefully."
  How did people in the neighborhood know it was you?
  Cooper: "Antoine told the guys he hung around with. Now did the whole neighborhood approach me on it? Not the whole neighborhood, but most of the people that knew him and knew me. I got scared. You don't want to stick around for that."
2015.09.14 - NYT - Joyce Mitchell, Who Helped Prisoners Escape, Says She Was Driven by Fear and Depression
- In the interview with Mr. Lauer, Ms. Mitchell said she was drawn into a friendship with both men and a flirtation with Mr. Matt because she was depressed, according to a transcript and excerpts from the interview released on Monday by NBC. (The full interview will be broadcast on “Dateline” on Friday night.)
  “I didn’t feel like my husband loved me anymore,” she said. “And I guess it was just me. I was going through depression. And I guess they saw my weakness and that’s how it all started.”
  “Their attention made me feel good,” she added.
  She started taking the men cookies and brownies. She said she was nervous about getting caught, because “they’re supposed to check our bags every morning when we come in and they’re supposed to check them when you go out.”
  “But they — they never did,” she continued.
  Later, Mr. Matt asked her for the tools, and she smuggled them into the prison in frozen hamburger meat. She said she was initially resistant but complied because Mr. Matt had threatened to kill her husband, Lyle Mitchell, and had also asked her where her mother and son lived.
  “He looked at me one day and said, ‘You know, Joyce, I do love you.’ And I said, ‘I love my husband.’ And a little while after that he wanted to get rid of Lyle.”
  She said the men told her they were planning to escape only after she gave them the tools.
  “I did wrong,” she said. “I deserve to be punished. But, you know, people need to know that I was only trying to save my family.”
  Ms. Mitchell said in the interview that she was not in love with Mr. Matt. She told investigators that at one point he asked her to perform oral sex on him and she consented, and she also groped his genitals on several occasions. In the television interview, she said tearfully that Mr. Matt had forced her to perform oral sex, saying that “there was never any consensual” sexual contact.

- She says that Mr. Matt had forced her to perform oral sex, and that "there was never any consensual" sexual contact...
- ...but in the context of the rest of the stuff she said, I would bet she's just trying to do as much damage-control as possible.
  - ...which I can totally understand. I can see myself doing that if I was in her position. I think many (most?) people would do that.
- I just think it's important to keep in mind that women are human, and they may be just as likely to lie as a man when they're put in a situation where they have an incentive to lie.
2015.11.23 - People - Louisiana Woman Shot Her Son in the Head, Then Tried to Pretend He'd Kidnapped Her: Police
- Dora Blake, 47, was purportedly celebrating her birthday when she fatally shot her son, 22-year-old Patrick Hollingsworth, in the head and injured the other woman.
  Some Good Samaritans pulled over to help after spotting the car. Blake allegedly told them that she had been kidnapped and had managed to shoot her captors. The witnesses then repeated that story to the sheriff's deputies who arrived to assist with the crash.
  But when detectives interviewed the surviving victim, she told them that the three of them had gone to a casino to celebrate Blake's birthday, which was on Sunday. "The lady in the front seat, she told us what had happened," says Davis. "Her son was treating her to a birthday celebration and she ended up shooting him.
2016.01.08 - Washington Post - ‘Catfishing’ over love interest might have spurred U-Va. gang-rape debacle
- “All available evidence demonstrates that ‘Haven Monahan’ was a fake suitor created by Jackie in a strange bid to earn the affections of a student named Ryan Duffin that Jackie was romantically interested in,” Eramo’s lawyers wrote in court papers filed this week.
  
  Jackie had told Duffin that a date with Haven Monahan on Sept. 28, 2012, had gone terribly wrong, claiming that the upperclassman had forced her to perform oral sex on five other men. That fall night, Duffin was among a group of friends who rushed to be by Jackie’s side as she cried; Duffin described her as being hysterical and appearing traumatized.
2018.08.23 - NY Daily News - Long Island woman who made up rape allegations rolls her eyes as she is sentenced to one year in jail
- "I went from being a college student to sitting at home being expelled with no way to clear my name," Malik St. Hilaire said in a Bridgeport courtroom on Thursday as he stood near Yovino, according to The Hour newspaper. “I just hope she knows what she has done to me, my life will never be the same. I did nothing wrong, but everything has been altered because of this.”
- Yovino, of South Setauket, N.Y., would later admit that she made up the rape claim to try to get the attention of another man she was interested in.

STDs

General

Wikipedia - Sexually transmitted infection
- This has a good list of STDs and what you can catch from different sex acts.

Gonorrhea

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonorrhea

Herpes

This is one of the most common STDs, and thus worth spending extra time learning about.
There are two types: HSV-1 and HSV-2.
HSV-1 is the 'cold sore' variety. It generally isn't so bad.
- Although althletes can get it on their faces, where it's known as 'scrumpox' or 'herpes gladiatorium', and that's pretty nasty.
HSV-2 is the nastier one, but even that one can be managed with certain drugs.
Acyclovir is the main drug you want.
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/health/healthguide/esn-herpes-expert.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/293350-please-help-herpes-nightmare/
- I have wrtten a book about herpes simplex virus, so maybe I can help. Admittedly the book is 25 years old, but the information below isn't out of date.
  The first episode of herpes presents an opportunity to kill it off, or at least to reduce its potency, which will never come again. This also applies to the period between the day one is infected and the day the virus manifests itself in one's first attack (average ~10 days).
  As said by others above, the drug you need is acyclovir, which is marketed as Zovirax, but now has run out of patent & is a 'generic' drug marketed under many names (often with a 'zov' or 'vir' in the name). Don't worry - it's easy to buy everywhere, including Thailand. Talk to a proper pharmacist to be sure - not the 17-year-old girl on night duty.
  After you're infected the first time, the herpes virus manifests on the skin as lesions (blisters). It then retreats up the nerve pathways & goes to live (in the case of genital herpes) in the nearby sacral ganglia, where it disassembles itself, rendering itself immune to chemical attack.
  However if acyclovir is taken before it migrates up to the ganglia, there is a reasonable chance it can be destroyed, or certainly reduced. I.e. subsequent outbreaks will be milder than they would have been.
  When acyclovir was first formulated, but before it was released (early 80s), I studied hundreds of clinical trials done with it. The above effect was clearly apparent. However the manufacturer (Burroughs Wellcome) did not publicise this recurrence-preventing effect, focussing its marketing instead on simply treating recurrent episodes.
  I pointed this out in the press, & was criticised by Burroughs Wellcome for being too 'conspiratorial' (though we got on well on other scores). Two decades or so on, the above is not only accepted by BW but is part of their marketing. (Their apology must have gone astray in the mail.)
  Whether you have HSV1 or the stronger HSV2 isn't so important right now as getting your gf onto the acyclovir. She might be reluctant to take an antiviral drug for 10 days, but you could point out that having herpes for the rest of her life could be somewhat worse. Also, acyclovir has no perceptible side-efects for anyone - & the imperceptibe ones are few, minor & transient. I am fairly anti-medication, but I (& the clinical literature) regard it as a very safe drug.
  In getting tested for STDs before getting intimate with your gf, you have been unusually responsible. If only more did the same.
  3 more minor points:
  * Most herpes sufferers notice a reduced rate of recurrence as time goes by & the immune system learns to deal with it better.
  * Don't kiss anyone when you have an outbreak on your lip.
  * When I wrote my book, herpes was seen as the end of the world. Then AIDS came along. Today, most people I know have herpes: few regard it as anything more than an occasional annoyance.
  I don't pop in here often, so email me if more info is required: johnmac11 AT fastmail.us

HPV

This is what gives people genital warts.
You can get a vaccine for this. It is administered in three doses over the course of six months.
I got the vaccine. I think it was totally worth it.
The serious thing about this one is that it can give you cancer. I think I remember reading that Michael Douglas got cancer from HPV (and probably also smoking).

Syphilis

Wikipedia - Syphilis

Virginity

At the moment my impression is that the focus of Americans on virginity is a holdover from a different age where virginity meant more.

Misc articles:
http://vagendamag.blogspot.com/2012/10/ ... irgin.html

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