OK, so I had a debate with my friend a whole ago about homosexuality, and he used the good old excuse of how it was wrong because it wasn't natural and you can't make children that way. I gave him a simple reply: "When you have sex with your girlfriend, are you going to do it for procreation or pleasure?"
Unsurprisingly, he chose the latter, which only proved my point. I think I've said something like this before, but if we all lived by "human nature", we'd be like wild animals, akin to caveman, without self-control, and stuff like money and technology wouldn't even exist. I could go on, but I think you get the point. People seem to just be regurgitating a script of what their parents, the media and the society tell us, without really thinking about what's behind it.
I believe that probably the only, or at least main reason that we live in a heteronormative society where heterosexuality is percieved as the "default" or "correct" sexuality (ignoring the varying scale of sexuality portrayed by such things as the Kinsey scale; I think 100% heterosexual people are in the minority) is because, back then, due to culture, religion and lack of knowledge we have now, the dictat was that sex should only be used for procreation, and obviously two penises/two vaginas can't make a baby.
But why would that be, if sex is more about pleasure than anything? Even the religious fundamentalists, who are pro-children and anti-condoms (even though they can actually prevent STDs) wouldn't be able to deny their body that pleasure during sex, even if for procreation, and those that try to repress those urges can end up destroying themselves (e.g. those Catholic priests that molest children).
So is the pleasure part of sex an incentive for procreation? Maybe the whole plan (I'm an Atheist, though, so any kind of set "plan" may not apply to people like me, and arguably, existence is random and has no meaning save what we choose to impose...yes, I stole a Rorschach quote from Watchmen; sue me) was to essentially trick people into accidental pregnancies? But now that we have condoms, birth control, abortion, etc., that pretty much eliminates that biological programming. They're even saying that, in the future, women may not even menstruate anymore, due to medicine, technology or whatever. I mean, we humans have evolved so much over the years. Not everyone wants to have children, especially as we're running out of resources as it is, and a lot of people abuse this responsibility by popping out living human beings like a goddamn gumball machine, born into oblivion (another Rorschach quote!) and many destined to suffer in poverty, illness, depression, etc.
Heck, there are even some people that think it's selfish to have children, and you know what? I can't blame them, and I'm almost inclined to favour that belief. It's [/i]them[/i] that want children, and many of them have this idealistic dream of what they want or believe their children will turn out to be. A writer, a doctor, a scientist. And they forget that it won't be happy families after long, they're going to be living those own lives, they shouldn't try to project themselves onto an innocent, impressionable blank slate that should form its own uncorrupted opinions (which is why I disagree with people baptising or raising their children as Christians/Muslims/whatever), after 18 years that time-killer will be more or less gone, and I honestly can't understand why anyone would want to bring a child into such a cruel, unforgiving and random world as this one.
No-one can see the future, so no-one knows what'll happen to anyone, including their own children. I don't think life is a blessing. I think it's a highly overrated phenomenon. And I realize this has kind of trailed off from my original subject, so I'll stop here.
Unsurprisingly, he chose the latter, which only proved my point. I think I've said something like this before, but if we all lived by "human nature", we'd be like wild animals, akin to caveman, without self-control, and stuff like money and technology wouldn't even exist. I could go on, but I think you get the point. People seem to just be regurgitating a script of what their parents, the media and the society tell us, without really thinking about what's behind it.
I believe that probably the only, or at least main reason that we live in a heteronormative society where heterosexuality is percieved as the "default" or "correct" sexuality (ignoring the varying scale of sexuality portrayed by such things as the Kinsey scale; I think 100% heterosexual people are in the minority) is because, back then, due to culture, religion and lack of knowledge we have now, the dictat was that sex should only be used for procreation, and obviously two penises/two vaginas can't make a baby.
But why would that be, if sex is more about pleasure than anything? Even the religious fundamentalists, who are pro-children and anti-condoms (even though they can actually prevent STDs) wouldn't be able to deny their body that pleasure during sex, even if for procreation, and those that try to repress those urges can end up destroying themselves (e.g. those Catholic priests that molest children).
So is the pleasure part of sex an incentive for procreation? Maybe the whole plan (I'm an Atheist, though, so any kind of set "plan" may not apply to people like me, and arguably, existence is random and has no meaning save what we choose to impose...yes, I stole a Rorschach quote from Watchmen; sue me) was to essentially trick people into accidental pregnancies? But now that we have condoms, birth control, abortion, etc., that pretty much eliminates that biological programming. They're even saying that, in the future, women may not even menstruate anymore, due to medicine, technology or whatever. I mean, we humans have evolved so much over the years. Not everyone wants to have children, especially as we're running out of resources as it is, and a lot of people abuse this responsibility by popping out living human beings like a goddamn gumball machine, born into oblivion (another Rorschach quote!) and many destined to suffer in poverty, illness, depression, etc.
Heck, there are even some people that think it's selfish to have children, and you know what? I can't blame them, and I'm almost inclined to favour that belief. It's [/i]them[/i] that want children, and many of them have this idealistic dream of what they want or believe their children will turn out to be. A writer, a doctor, a scientist. And they forget that it won't be happy families after long, they're going to be living those own lives, they shouldn't try to project themselves onto an innocent, impressionable blank slate that should form its own uncorrupted opinions (which is why I disagree with people baptising or raising their children as Christians/Muslims/whatever), after 18 years that time-killer will be more or less gone, and I honestly can't understand why anyone would want to bring a child into such a cruel, unforgiving and random world as this one.
No-one can see the future, so no-one knows what'll happen to anyone, including their own children. I don't think life is a blessing. I think it's a highly overrated phenomenon. And I realize this has kind of trailed off from my original subject, so I'll stop here.