One night poll

[ewx]

Apropos of this article.

[Poll #701581]

Notes:

• If you're in a monogamous relationship then answer as if you were not - i.e. I'm asking about your opinion about the activity in general not about your current situation.
• "Morally wrong for everybody" means you think nobody should do it. "Morally wrong for you but OK for other people" means you'd think you were being bad if you did it but wouldn't necessarily think the same of someone else doing it. "OK for everybody" means you wouldn't think anyone, including yourself, was being bad for it (even if they themselves would).
• You can think it's distateful, or indication of something missing, without necessarily also thinking it's wrong.

Comments

[gerald_duck]

Compare with swearing.

I swear, but swear sparingly; if I say "fuck", I'm seriously perturbed. At my previous job it was three years before I said "fuck" in a professional context, and when I did the Sales Director immediately went to find the MD because he could tell something had gone seriously wrong.

There are people who swear three times in every sentence. For them, swearing has lost all meaning.

I'm not a starry-eyed romantic who believes sex is sacrosanct and to be enjoyed only within the bonds of matrimony with a single life-long partner, and I'm fully aware sex is fun in and of itself, regardless of the presence or absence of an emotional bond, but I do feel it's unwise to dilute its significance too far.

I wouldn't seek to draw lines in the sand, but the more shallow and profligate I saw someone being, the more concerned I'd be. Personally, I wouldn't have sex with someone I didn't at least like a great deal as a friend, and I feel slightly edgy justifying even that to lovers.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I think you and the habitual swearer just have different forms of expression there. If something worse than every crops up I would imagine they'll find some way of expressing the unusual nature of the situation.

Not so sure it's a good analogy anyway. If you put sex-in-love and casual sex in different categories, how does the latter dilute the former? These categories are human constructions, not some fact about the universe that are forced to obey.

[gerald_duck]

I still think it's an excellent analogy.

A habitual swearer might be talking to someone who understands that the peppering of expletives isn't intended to detract from the gravity of swearing in more significant circumstances; a habitual partaker of casual sex might be making love to someone who understands that their having slept with people they didn't love isn't intended to detract from the intensity of the sexual experience in more significant circumstances.

In each case, they might get lucky and find someone who doesn't mind that they've weakened their expressive power by what is effectively chronic hyperbole.

But most people will mind. And, though I'm not as fastidious as some, that includes me.