#psychology #sex # [[Epistemic status]] #shower-thought #to-digest # Related - [[Esther Perel - Mating in Captivity - Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic]] - [[Evolutionary psychology]] - [[Feminism]] - [[Biology/Sex]] - [[David M. Buss - The Evolution of Desire Strategies of Human Mating]] - [[Halo effect]] # TODO > [!TODO] TODO # Sex ## [[Poetry and science]] ### [[Poetry|Poet]] `  >Is not one of the factors that in sexual activity there is total freedom? >~ [[Krishnamurti|Jiddu Krishnamurti]]  ### [[Science|Scientist]] ![[Epistemic warning - Politically correct]] >The shape of women’s faces changes subtly during their ovulatory cycle, and men prefer female faces at the time of ovulation. >~ [[Robert Sapolsky - Behave - The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky|Robert Sapolsky]] >Women with the opportunity to receive good education and desirable employment tend to want fewer children than those with fewer opportunities outside the home. >~ [[Gregory Mankiw - Principles of Macroeconomics|Gregory Mankiw]] >Female competition occurs almost exclusively in pairbonded species, such as many birds and a few mammals. In those cases, females try to gain or defend a long-term tie with a male. Our own species is a good example: research by David Buss has demonstrated that whereas men get most upset at the thought of their wife or girlfriend having sex with another man, women dislike most the thought that their husband or boyfriend actually loves another woman, regardless of whether or not sex occurred. >~ [[Frans de de Waal - Chimpanzee Politics|Chimpanzee Politics]] >The distinctive human problem from time immemorial has been the need to spiritualize human life, to lift it onto a special immortal plane, beyond the cycles of life and death that characterize all other organisms. This is one of the reasons that sexuality has from the beginning been under taboos; it had to be lifted from the plane of physical fertilization to a spiritual one. >~ [[Ernest Becker]] ### Chimpanzee children are fascinated by sex >When they groomed each other they cuddled up close, and when they indulged in sexual games they did so away from the group. In this way they avoided being disturbed by the chimpanzee children, who are fascinated by sex, or by Oor. Oor would come rushing up to Amber on two legs, thrashing threateningly with her arms, intent on interrupting her mating session with Nikkie. At other times she would quickly present herself to Nikkie just as Amber was about to do so. Her interference only decreased after she had developed an intimate relationship of her own, with Dandy. These two young couples proved with their fondling, cuddling, and enthusiasm that chimpanzees are capable of playing with sex. This was clearest of all in the so-called "sex dances." >~ [[Frans de de Waal - Chimpanzee Politics|Chimpanzee Politics]] ### Deceptive strategies >Although women are more likely to be sexual deceivers, men are more likely to be commitment deceivers. >~ [[David M. Buss]] Men and women use different deceptive strategies to reach their sexual [[Personal growth/Goal|goals]]. Short-term mating is by definition a non-iterative multiplayer game. As a reminder, short-term mating strategies are optimal for the [[Monkey Brain]] which optimise decision making in spreading the [[Selfish gene]] in a wide range of mates for the male. Women are rather looking for long-term mating in order to secure a committed parent which will carry the woman genes. I suppose that in kind of game strategies like [[Tit for tat]] are poor and more defective strategies are more adapted. For example if Bob fake its emotions to Alice in order to have sex and succeed, once he have sex, he won, he can just leave and he achieved the purpose of his life: propagate his genes. >When my lab asked 112 college men whether they had ever exaggerated the depth of their feelings for a woman in order to have sex with her, 71 percent admitted to having done so, compared with only 39 percent of the women who were asked a parallel question. When the women were asked whether a man had ever deceived them by his exaggeration of the depth of his feelings in order to have sex with her, 97 percent admitted that they had experienced this tactic at the hands of men; in contrast, only 59 percent of the men had experienced this tactic at the hands of women. >~ [[David M. Buss]] ### The [[Biology/Evolution/Red Queen|Red Queen]] competition between men's short-term and women's long-term strategies ### Detecting commitment >Getting a man to **express himself emotionally** represents one tactic that women use to gain access to the important information they need to discern a man’s degree of commitment. >~ [[David M. Buss]] >One reason men fail to express their emotions is that investing less emotionally in a relationship frees up resources that can be channeled toward other women or other goals. As in many negotiable exchanges, it is often in a man’s best interest not to reveal how strong his desires are or how intensely he is willing to commit. >~ [[David M. Buss]] ### Physical attractiveness >Multi-decade mating studies in the United States from 1939 to 1996 found that **men rate physical attractiveness and good looks as more important and desirable in a potential mate than do women**. Men tend to see attractiveness as important, whereas women tend to see it as desirable but not very important. The gender difference in the importance of attractiveness remains constant from one generation to the next. Its size does not vary throughout the decades. Men’s greater preference for physically attractive mates is among the most consistently documented psychological sex differences. >~ [[David M. Buss]] ### Homosexuality as a cloning strategy From a more spiritual/[[Metaphysical|metaphysical]] point of view, >This brilliant speculation enables us to understand some of the ideal motives for homosexuality, not only of the Greeks, but of especially individualized and creative persons like Michelangelo. For such a one, apparently, homosexuality has nothing to do with the sex organs of the beloved but rather represents a struggle to create one’s own rebirth in the “closest possible likeness,” which, as Rank says, is obviously to be found in one’s own sex. In terms of our discussion we can see that this attempt represents the complete causa-sui project: **to create all by oneself a spiritual, intellectual, and physically similar replica of oneself: the perfectly individualized self-perpetuation or immortality symbol**. >~ [[Ernest Becker]] From a more [[Evolution|evolutionary]] point of view, >The sexologist Alfred Kinsey estimated that more than one-third of all men engage at some point in life in some form of homosexual activity. >~ [[David M. Buss]] ### Monogamy >Why men would ever commit to just one woman poses a puzzle. Since all an ancestral man needed to do to reproduce was to impregnate a woman, casual sex without commitment would have achieved this goal. For evolution to produce men who desire commitment or marriage and who are willing to devote years of investment to one woman, powerful adaptive advantages to that strategy over one of seeking casual sex, at least under some circumstances, must have been present. >Men also gain in two other ways by committing. One is an increase in **social status**. In many cultures, males are not considered “real men” until they have married. Increased status, of course, brings a man other bounties, including **better resources for his children** and sometimes an **increased attractiveness to additional mates**. A final benefit of commitment or marriage is the formation of a **more expansive coalitional network** that includes his spouse’s friends and kin. Men, in short, have much to gain by committing to one woman. >~ [[David M. Buss]] ### Wife's age is inversely proportional to wallet size >As men’s income goes up, they seek younger partners. >~ [[David M. Buss]] ### Male optimise for quantity, female for quality >Within the next year, for example, men stated on average that ideally they would like to have more than six sex partners, whereas women said that they would like to have only one. >~ [[David M. Buss]] >The psychological clues that reveal men’s strategies for casual sex are numerous: sexual fantasies, the Coolidge effect, lust, sex drive, inclination to seek intercourse rapidly, relaxation of standards, attitudes toward hookups, emotions of sexual regret, the closing time effect, post-orgasm shifts in judgments of women’s attractiveness, homosexual proclivities, and willingness to use prostitution as a sexual outlet. >~ [[David M. Buss]] ### Males like diversity >"**You don’t want to eat the same vegetable every day**.”A Kgatla man from South Africa described his sexual desires about his two wives: “I find them both equally desirable, but when I have slept with one for three days, by the fourth day she has wearied me, and when I go to the other I find that I have greater passion, she seems more attractive than the first, but it is not really so, for when I return to the latter again there is the same renewed passion. >~ [[David M. Buss]] ### Having children means you've done your job, you can exit the gene pool now ### [[Osho]] spiritual thoughts #metaphysical [[The value of metaphysical statements]]? >A conditional love is nothing but an infatuation, sexuality. Unconditional is the only way love can be. Wherever a condition comes in, love disappears. It cannot live in bondage, and a condition gives it an imprisonment. Love can only live like the vast sky. Love knows no boundaries. >Sexuality is possible without any understanding, without any meditation. Love is possible only with understanding. Compassion is possible only with understanding and meditation, understanding and awareness. >The meditative person can transform his sexuality without any antagonism. without any conflict. He is in deep friendship with all his energies, sexual or others; he is not in any fight. Why fight with your own energies? Love them, rejoice in them, and help them to transcend the lower forms, the animal forms. Let them move from the body towards the turiya, the fourth. >If you want to change from sex towards love, try to understand your sexuality. Watch it, watch the mechanicalness of it. See the futility, see the whole absurdity of it — it is not leading you anywhere. Become a little more refined, become a little more subtle. Look not for the body, but somebody’s being. Watch, explore. Sooner or later you will find somebody who fits with you. >Ordinarily we think sex makes people loving — sex can never make people loving. In fact, it is sexuality that prevents love from growing — because it is the same energy that has to become love. It is being destroyed in sex. To become love, the same energy has to move to the heart centre. >One has to love unconditionally — the trees and the rocks and the sun and the moon and the people. >A boyfriend or a girlfriend may be fun, but cannot become a door to the deepest that is hidden in each and everyone. With a girlfriend you can be sexually related, but love cannot grow. Love needs deep roots. Sexuality is possible on the surface, but sexuality is just animal, biological. It can be beautiful if it is part of a deeper love, but if it is not part of a deeper love it is the most ugly thing possible; the ugliest, because then there is no communion — you simply touch each other and separate. Only bodies meet, but not you — not I, not thou. This has happened in all relationships. >Love is born in sexuality but sexuality is not love. The lotus is born in the mud, but the lotus is not just mud. And if mud remains mud of course there are bound to be tears on the cheeks. >Love can exist only after meditation, not before it. That is a simple existential law. Before meditation — only lust, only sexuality. Before meditation you are an animal and not really a human being. With meditation a transformation comes: you become human, and out of your humanness, love flows. >Beware of lust, unconscious sexuality. When sex becomes conscious it has a totally different flavor. It becomes tantra, it is no longer sex. When sex becomes conscious it is love, it is no longer lust. Love brings freedom, and lust simply creates prisons for you. >Unless your sexuality rises and reaches to love it is mundane, it has nothing sacred about it. When your sex becomes love, then it is entering into a totally different dimension — the dimension of the mysterious and the miraculous. Now it is becoming religious, sacred, it is no longer profane. >Sex can be transcended and should be transcended, but transcendence has to be not against nature but with nature, Through nature. Accept your sexuality — it is part of you! and a tremendously important part. You are born out of sex. Each cell of your body is a sex cell. Sex energy is your life energy! — respect it, it is a gift from God. Understand it. Be more and more meditative about it. But drop all prejudices, drop all condemnations. because when you carry a condemnation you cannot understand a thing. Drop all judgements. Sex is sex — it is a pure natural energy. With great acceptance, love, respect, meditate over it. Go deeper and deeper into it to see what exactly it is. And in that very seeing you will be going beyond it. >The person who is free of sexuality, whose sexuality has become a transformed phenomenon, is also free of money, is also free of ambition, is also free of the desire to be famous. Immediately all these things disappear from his life. The moment sex energy starts rising upwards, the moment sex energy starts becoming love, prayer, meditation, then all lower manifestations disappear. >Love is creative. Sex is destructive. And there is a lot of difference between the two. Sometimes you start thinking that your sexuality is your love. Then you are deceived. Sexuality can play the game of love, but it is a counterfeit game. I am not against sex, but I am certainly against sexuality. And the difference is that sex is a natural thing and sexuality is a mind thing. To love a woman is natural, to love a man is natural. To reproduce children is natural, nothing wrong in it. But to think about women, to carry pornographic pictures, to fall asleep every night thinking about women — women and women and women — that is sexuality. >When you are in sexuality you don’t bother much to whom you are making love — any body will do. You just need a woman or a man, any body will do. You just need the other’s body. In love, any body won’t do, anybody’s body won’t do. You need a person who is in deep love with you, who has a certain affinity and harmony with you, in whose presence your heart starts singing, a deep bell starts ringing… in whose presence you feel a blessing. Then only is it possible for you to make love to the other person. To make love is possible only if the meeting — the inner meeting — has happened. Otherwise it is simply impossible to think, even to imagine that you are making love to a person you don’t love. >If you have really experienced the inner light, sex will disappear. Love will happen to you, but sex will disappear; sexuality will disappear. Love, a very loving personality, will take its place. There will be no desire for sex. If the desire for sex remains, you have not experienced the inner light. Then the inner light is just a projection of the mind. >A split personality can never become non-greedy. It can try, but it can never become. A split personality can never go beyond anger. It can try, but it can never go beyond. A split personality can never go beyond sex. It can fight. So many monks in the monasteries are doing it. They don’t go beyond sex; at the most their sexuality becomes perverted, their love becomes poisoned. >Remember, you can make love to a woman without any love in your heart — then it is pure sexuality, animality; it is prostitution. You can make love to a woman with no idea of sex, then love is just a pure communication of two energies, a sharing, a dance, a celebration. No idea of sex in the mind and you can make love to a woman, and the woman can make love to you not thinking of sex at all. The whole point is where your mind is. If you are thinking of sex, if your mind is obsessed with sex, you simply want to use the woman, the woman simply wants to use you, it is ugly. It has no aesthetics in it, no poetry in it. There is nothing of the beyond in it — it is very muddy.