Statistical chemistry, as I understand it, is the study of reactions, particularly as it regards their completeness. That is, if I take reactants and a catalyst and add them together in a certain way, they will produce a product. The reaction is described as a chemical formula, like so.
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| A good image to go with my morning cup of Joe. |
Statistical chemistry will give us the percentage of reactants that stubbornly refuse to be consumed and stay in their original form. The fact that some caffeine molecules remain unchanged does not invalidate the equation.
In my previous post, I glibly asserted the following as the model for romantic relationships, calling it the Dance of Romance.
- Women work hard to be attractive to men, not knowing when they will encounter Prince Charming.
- A man notices the woman and his desire is kindled. He approaches her.
- If he is acceptable, she allows him to woo her and she encourages him.
- He works to prove his kindness, generosity, valor and competence to her.
- She continues to encourage him.
- If the relationship works out, he proposes marriage and she accepts.
- She gives him children. He gives her resources and protection.
- Love
Wife kitteh and I have taught the San Diego diocese's remarriage class a zillion times now. Every class starts with the couple telling their love story as a way to break the ice. Every one has followed this same evolution. The fact that there are some love stories out there which do not follow this pattern does not invalidate the pattern.
I've seen plenty of Catholic retreat closing ceremonies where the newbies, raw with the emotions which have emerged from being surrounded by acceptance and love* for a whole weekend, share intimate details about how they've grown. Nearly every woman describes feelings that illustrate that sequence in some way. Nearly every man describes feelings that illustrate that sequence in some way. The fact that there are some reactions which do not illustrate this pattern does not invalidate the pattern.
Porn Is Local
In the previous post, I claimed that feminism had destroyed romance, ruined the lives of women and completely ignored the devastation wrought by the popularity of violent porn. I did this by mocking a Miller Lite ad that wagged a feminist finger at old-school bikini beer posters. My message was a simple, "Get a life. This is just a crude echo of how we engage in romance."
Tim asked a good question which I will endeavor to answer in this blog post.
So what is the distinction between "pictures of women in skimpy bikinis" and "pornography"?
The answer is, it depends on local social norms. If I'm in an Amish community, the answer is, "None." If I'm in a feminist community, the answer is also, "None." If I'm in a honkytonk in Verbena, Alabama, the answer is, "Get a life. Chicks in bikinis are hot. I can tell the difference between the poster of a beautiful woman showing off what her mama gave her and a video of a guy choking a girl as he rapes her from behind."
Maybe you can't. Maybe you need a Fortran program that takes in images and outputs a 1 for porn or a 0 for not porn and without that, you'll refuse to take steps to censor porn. That's where we are right now as a society.
Sexuality is on a spectrum, going from the height of a woman's heels to videos that capture a live-action sequence of a girl trying to escape from a room where three men are trying to rape her.
Yes, those exist. They are a whole category of modern porn. No, I haven't seen any, but I've ready plenty of essays from people, usually women, who've gone sewer diving on PornHub.
Let's generalize Tim's question with the example of heels.
So what is the distinction between 1" heels and 3" heels in terms of porn? How about the lengths and fit of skirts? How about the coverage of tops? Is there a crossover?
We as a society have gone legalistic on this. That's a mistake. Until said Fortran program exists, we're unwilling to classify some things as porn and others not. That misses the point of censoring porn.
Why Censor Porn
Porn is censored to protect society. We need children to be born. They will be the ones caring for us, both personally and financially, when we get older. We need children to grow up to be productive and happy members of society. We need our young people to be emotionally healthy.
Our limbic systems pursue three goals - food, survival and mating. Sex is a primal motivational driver in our lives. Screw with that and the downstream effects are massive. Porn does just that.
Feminism denies my Dance of Romance. Gender Theory denies the differences between sexes. Feminism and Gender Theory are now the default settings for society. They have wrecked women's lives as seen in the chart above. It's more proof that you don't fight the Fed and you don't fight Nature.
No, Really, Porn Is Local
Because sexuality is on a continuum, porn cannot be defined by a legal description, a Fortran program or even ChatGPT. Definitions of porn are really definitions of how a local community wants to protect its young people from sexual harm. SanFran is all in on perversion. Rural Kansas, not so much. The only way for porn censorship to work is to make it local and subjective. That's because it is. Justice Potter was right on the money all along.
In 1964, Justice Potter Stewart tried to explain "hard-core" pornography, or what is obscene, by saying, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced... [b]ut I know it when I see it ..."
These days on this blog, I'm trying to stop reacting to the culture, which is controlled by the progs, and posit a positive position for my own positions. Hence the Dance of Romance. From that, I can derive all manner of ideas and suggestions instead of just waving my arms and hating things I hate.
I claim that my Dance of Romance is true in the way the metabolization of caffeine is true. I claim that from that model, you can create local, moral standards of behavior that protect people in their sexual prime from wrecking their lives by ruining their sex drives. I claim that you can create local, moral standards that protect women from emotional ruin and encourage the creation of babies, motivate the professional and moral growth of men and define the proper use of the horizontal monkey dance in marriage.
And that right there is a whole lot of fun. Unlike the feminists and the gender creeps, I'm pro-fun.
* - At our Catholic retreats, acceptance and love is for everyone except the homosexuals, of course. And the blacks. And the women. And people from other countries. The FBI is spot on about this. We're xenophobic, patriarchal, white supremacists who hate gays.
Hmmmm… I guess this is a picking nits comment, but here goes anyway.
ReplyDeleteI have never heard of ‘Statistical Chemistry’. Certainly Chemistry includes a Statistical Mechanics subset within Physical Chemistry. Part of that specifically includes the study of chemical equilibrium. That seems to be what you referring to. It is the mathematical treatment of the fact that every chemical reaction runs both ways. So in your example caffeine turns into paraxanthine and paraxanthine turns into caffeine. The extent to which caffeine turns into paraxanthine is controlled by the equilibrium constant (which is mathematically defined by the Free Energy change that occurs in the reaction). The equilibrium constant is also the ratio of the rate constants for the forward and reverse reactions. The mathematical relationships that define these facts is, to me, true beauty.
On the not nearly so nit picking side, the story of Mrs Ohioan and I certainly does not fit your dance precisely. However, since you said specifically that the dance “goes something like this”, I have to concede that that is a generically correct depiction.
I like to leave hanging curveballs over the plate for you from time to time.
ReplyDelete:-)
Maybe I was thinking about this.
I could have sworn I saw a book with this title in the Technical Library back in the day. Oh well.
ChatGPT says I'm thinking of stoichiometry or maybe chemical kinetics. Who knows. I still really like this post. I'll have to retitle it a few weeks from now so I can use it as a reference in the future and not be wrong about the science analogy. Thanks for the tip!
ReplyDelete"Physical Chemistry Porn" would have made for a much better title. It works on so many levels.
ReplyDeleteBack in the Ice Age, when I was young, at least two of the women I started dating wanted either to go to a beach or sun-bathe in the yard very soon after we met. Home lesson: women are as interested in a man's physique as men are in a woman's. They just express it differently ... and not so openly.
ReplyDeleteIlion, I'm going to push back on that one and use porn preferences as my evidence. Romance novels show you the dominant aphrodisiac for women. For guys, it's visual. I agree that there is significant crossover, but I don't agree with the "just as interested" part.
ReplyDeleteKT / Ilion, I would point to a study (not well known, but it should be) that surveyed college students at a “Midwest college” in the mid 1980’s concerning what characteristics men and women look for in a mate. I am taking this from a book in which it is cited. The book is “Sexual Selection” by James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould, published by Scientific American Library, a division of HPHLP, New York, 1989, pages 258 & 259.
ReplyDeleteThe upshot of the study is given by the ranked lists of ‘Characteristics Sought in a Mate’. The thirteen characteristics ranked remarkably similar between males and females, with two significant differences. Males ranked “physical attractiveness” as the third most important, while females ranked it sixth. Then males ranked “good earning capacity” as eleventh, and females ranked that at eighth. If those two properties are removed to create two lists of the remaining eleven properties then the male and female lists are nearly identical. The women’s list is: 1. Kindness annd understanding , 2. Intelligence, 3. Exciting personality, 4. Good health, 5. Adaptability, 6. Creativity, 7. College graduate, 8. Desire for children, 9. Good heredity, 10. Good housekeeper, & 11. Religious orientation. The only difference for the men is that “desire for children” and “college graduate” are reversed. Since “college graduate” is strongly correlated to “good earning capacity” (at least it was back then) it is not surprising that women rate that somewhat higher.
So what does that all have to do with your comments? I think it shows that (at least in the Midwest in the mid 1980’s when people knew the difference between men and women) men do care more about physical attractiveness, and women care more about the ability of the male to provide. That puts me firmly in the KT Camp on this one.
==That puts me firmly in the KT Camp on this one.==
ReplyDeleteYou're both overlooking that I said, "They [women] just express it [interest in the physique of the opposite sex] differently ... and not so openly."
I have no personal experience/knowledge of this, but as I understand how people interact with "online dating apps", most women rate most men as "below average" (*) ... based solely on a second or less of looking at a picture of them. How can this be if I were barking up the wrong tree?
Moreover, men are not so shallow as we are generally represented as being. Of a truth, a woman's physical appearance is generally what first catches our eye ... but it is her non-physical traits which hold our interest.
(*) which is, of course, a statistical contradiction.