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

[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.