"While human sexuality is a delicate subject, I deeply believe it should be discussed (vide my Dating for Nerds series) rather than shunned as a taboo topic. Some discussion about ethics and implications of using such data were covered in What I learned from building an AI that generates porn by David Mack."
Until it becomes socially acceptable to talk openly about, we need more people going out on a limb and being open in this way.
> Until it becomes socially acceptable to talk openly about
Well you see, I would hate to live in a world where it became socially acceptable to talk about human sexuality
I think it is good to be able to talk about it to your close friends / family
But I'm already disgusted when I hear coworkers talk about porn or their (most of the time imaginary) sexual life.
I think it is a very personal subject, and maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like you'd get less freedom in your sexual life if everybody was talking openly about it. Part of why I think that way is: people have weird fetishes for example, you could think in a society where you can talk openly about sex and you sexual life you could talk about your weird fetish, but I don't think that's the case, only "popular" fetishes / sexual preferences would be discussed, and "weird" fetishes / sexual preferences would be seen as degenerate.
Again this is my opinion, maybe I'm wrong, but I would definitely not want to talk openly about sex with random people.
As a society, we should talk about sex. Otherwise, it is something between a hidden topic and a fuel for inappropriate jokes. With the taboo mindset, it is hard to tackle problems (lack of sexual education, mental and physical problems, miscommunication, consent, boundaries, etc) in a meaningful way.
I support sex-positivity. It does not require one to like it (I know asexual sex-positive feminists), but to believe that all consensual, in-good-faith practices are fine. We may not be interested in them at all, or personally find them repealing, but it shouldn't be different from not liking a particular food.
There is a lot more to the human body than sex. It's just the one thing that society is obsessed over.
In terms of health outcomes talking about your bowels movement, preferably with photographic evidence, would mean that many types of cancers of the digestive tract would be caught early enough to be treatable. As opposed to the current system where you will more than likely not notice the trace amount of bleeding that are symptomatic to most of them.
I have yet to see anyone seriously propose tackling this, even though in terms of death rate all sexually transmitted diseases taken together are only half as deadly as stomach cancer alone.
Ever heard of German toilets? I don't know if they're prevalent anymore, but the rather than being preemptively filled with water, the classic German toilet is dry so you can inspect your stool and then flush it with a strong current of water.
I've heard one person who migrated to Germany as an adult say it's because German cuisine features all kinds of sausages which can give you stomach parasites. But I might be paraphrasing this story to the point it's inaccurate.
Maybe I'm being provincial, but if your food standards leave you regularly inspecting your own stool for parasites before flushing, you might want to reconsider them.
This is literally the first modern internet meme, but you can avoid that unfortunate effect by first setting a leaf-thin layer of toilet paper on top of the water.
But often I just really want to poop right away :)
Are you familiar with the paper napkins rolled up so tight they look like a peppermint, and when they get wet they unfurl? Maybe American toilets should have a jar of those things next to it on a shelf so you can quickly drop one in and go on with your business :)
For extra vintage meme, they should be shaped like sea shells.
The problem with this is that there are societies that are already like this and they are not good for a vast majority of people. I come from India where talking about sex is not done and, further, most people are married off by their parents. I have a friend who is going through a divorce because her husband is not interested in sex at all. He thinks it should not be an issue. She broke down at one point and told me that after 5 years of marriage she is still a virgin. He thinks there is nothing wrong with it. His parents are on his side. To me this is an absolutely tragic thing. She has lost 5 years of what could be a joyful exploration of her sexuality and, added to it, has the stigma of being a divorcee. We are sexual creatures, there should be nothing wrong in acknowledging it.
> but I feel like you'd get less freedom in your sexual life if everybody was talking openly about it. Part of why I think that way is: people have weird fetishes for example, you could think in a society where you can talk openly about sex and you sexual life you could talk about your weird fetish, but I don't think that's the case, only "popular" fetishes / sexual preferences would be discussed, and "weird" fetishes / sexual preferences would be seen as degenerate.
Likely exactly the other way around: people would hear other people having weird fetishes, and they would understand that most people have this weird side to them, and they would be more ok with their own weirdness.
You currently get looked at weird if you say you're interested in trains or stamp collecting or something. I think this prediction is a bit too optimistic.
(I will argue) the reason 50 Shades could be popular in the first place was because it is fundamentally anti-bdsm: it deploys it for titillation, but safely defines it as 'bad' and those who engage in such are 'broken' and everything is wrapped up and 'fixed' in the end (of the trilogy), so the audience gets to have the 'naughty thing' but get their previously conceived notion of 'it was bad and always will be so' re-enforced at the end.
Sadomasochism has been in the public eye for a long time. Fifty shades of gray made it popular to carry a book about it on the bus, but this was absolutely not an unrecognized fetish prior. It was (and is) one of the more openly discussed kinks.
Look at society and political opinions, these days if you're not politically correct you're being shamed and put apart from the rest. Talking about it didn't make people understand that "most people have this weird side of them", on the contrary
I don't like porn being mainstream, and I don't want to know how is a fury or not at my office. I don't think you need approval or random people to feel better. Find someone you love, find good friends, if you're lucky have a family. These are the people you want to talk these subjects, not some random coworker or someone you've met 2min ago.
At least 8 times out of 10, those complaining about "political correctness" are complaining that they are expected to treat others respectfully. Not calling someone by the right gender when they know what the person prefers, for example. I don't think folks should get offended when strangers mess up, but that's another story.
Sometimes random people are the best folks to talk to about this stuff. Just like other things, they might mention something you simply never considered before. Besides, you really have no way of knowing how much the coworkers speak, and most aren't talking about this in the first hour of work.
Porn being mainstream means that folks don't have to hide the behavior as much and no one will be surprised when they find out their lover, sibling, friend, or so on watches porn.
I truly don't want to have a family - I do not want children. I'm female and 40, and I hate folks pushing this stuff on me. There is much more to life than this sort of thing. The goal of life isn't to find love either. I'm OK being by myself, thank you. (I happen to be married, to one of my few friends, and that's OK too).
If you don't like these conversations, ask the people not to have them in earshot of you. I don't see what the big deal is with that.
> I would definitely not want to talk openly about sex with random people.
I wouldn't discuss my sex life with random people either.
But my wife and I have some close friends who are obviously having serious issues because the woman involved always ends up crying about it when we've all had one too many to drink. Unfortunately she won't discuss it at all when sober, which is a real shame as they're such a fantastic couple otherwise and we do desperately want them to work it out.
At the very least there could be something very normal going on that we could reassure them about and help them get over any anxiety that might be caused as a result.
Unfortunately these things aren't really discussed between friends and so she has to suffer in silence or use alcohol to deal with her problems.
[Posting under a throwaway as IRL friends know my username and could find this.]
> but I feel like you'd get less freedom in your sexual life if everybody was talking openly about it. Part of why I think that way is: people have weird fetishes for example, you could think in a society where you can talk openly about sex and you sexual life you could talk about your weird fetish, but I don't think that's the case, only "popular" fetishes / sexual preferences would be discussed, and "weird" fetishes / sexual preferences would be seen as degenerate.
In Chuck Rhoades words: "... At best, maybe on the way you tell someone who you really are. And maybe they like it. And maybe you feel just a little bit more comfortable in your own skin, as I finally do in mine!"
> Well you see, I would hate to live in a world where it became socially acceptable to talk about human sexuality
...
> I think it is a very personal subject, and maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like you'd get less freedom in your sexual life if everybody was talking openly about it.
I think this highligh the problem: in our society, sex is something special. It should not be.
Sex is like eating. It's a normal, regular part of life. There is nothing special about it. It's nice, it's fun, it's good for you.
The fact most people see it differently is a big blocker, and creates so many issues in humanity.
There's another school that says sex can be much more than eating. To reduce it to a normal activity is cynical. Yes, like pizza, even when its bad, its good. But it can be much more than just 'good'.
So go ahead and talk about it like its just tennis or something. I talk about stopping at McD's too. Not very interesting, nothing special.
Some people think collecting pokemon cards is special. We love to do that. Our kids are special. Ou god is special. Our situation is so special. This separates us, and there is not need for special when the whole universe is already astonishing in every ways.
It's not cynical, to call it cynical is just comming from the point of view of jugement. I would not juge breathing, why the hell would I juge sex ?
Seen a thing for a simple, enjoyable part of life is the very opposite of cynical. It's inclusive. It's embracing existance. It's also sane to not take things too seriously. Life has enough challenge to not had artificial difficulties.
I guess some folks have never experienced what it can be, then. To only see it as a simple, enjoyable part of life (like pokemon) diminishes what it can be by orders of magnitude.
But go ahead, continue sipping from the cup of life! That's all it will be for some folks I guess.
I've heard this one about so many things. I deeply and honestly followed people saying it to see what they meant. Spirituality, sex, drug, philosophy, meditation, human relationships, sport, games, love, traveling...
The link between all of them is how much they over sell their experience and pretend they have access to something unique other people just don't get.
That is a pretty disturbing view of sex and I would hate to live in a society where it was common to see it as nothing special. I think anything considered taboo is naturally much more special.
Pooping is taboo. Periods are taboo. Being gay is taboo. Psychedelic are taboo. Death is taboo. Money in my country is taboo.
Hell, for a long time, things like tattoos, breast feeding, and psychoanalysis were taboo.
In some culture, women have to hide behind religious clothing because their body is taboo.
A taboo is just a symptom of a society being sick. Taboo get people frustrated, violent, judgemental, unhappy.
It's in the same category as a dogma, as a basic "bad" or "good" label, as a blindness faith or a never criticized tradition. It's inertia. It's simplistic.
But the funny thing is... taboo is nothing special either. Just human nature.
> I don't think that's the case, only "popular" fetishes / sexual preferences would be discussed, and "weird" fetishes / sexual preferences would be seen as degenerate.
This is not unique to sexual preferences. Anything at all has an overton window and even permissive societies shun views that fall outside that.
There's this whole pop culture theme of 'be brave and be yourself' going around, and it's bullshit, because what it really means is 'be yourself as long as you're typical'. People who dare to be themselves and expose uncommon views or preferences are shunned every day.
> People who dare to be themselves and expose uncommon views or preferences are shunned every day.
This is false, when put it in the big picture - which is necessary. As they say, "Poor people are crazy; rich people are eccentric."; it's not about money; it's about having personality.
In this sense, eccentricity ("uncommon views", etc.) is a multiplier. If a person is perceived as a "loser", and is eccentric, they're going to be even more, and ultimately an outcast. If they're instead perceived as a "winner", they're going to be even more winner, and ultimately an icon.
Of course part of the big picture is complicated by the surrounding culture, the "taste" in the eccentricity ("gross eccentric" and "racist eccentric" are certainly not good in any case, for example), and so on, but the general principle stands.
Note that I'm using the terms loser/winner quite liberally; it's not easy to capture this human aspect.
I somewhat agree to this. I'm a Socialist. I have my own views on the subject that fall out of line with traditional socialism, but I still believe in cooperative society over competitive society.
As a United States citizen, I feel like the moment political preferences are brought up I have to duck out of the conversation or risk being judged very harshly. I've been in situations where I've made my leanings known to a group made up of liberals and conservatives arguing with one another who then immediately band together and try to bash me on how stupid I am for believing in a pipe dream. It's ridiculous.
That said, I have definitely met more tolerant people who are actually willing to have legitimate discussions on the topic. In the U.S., Socialism is a dirty word; just like sex.
I think it really does come down to normalization. If society becomes more open to talking about sex, the effect should start compounding to where it eventually becomes not only something that's OK to discuss, but something that people are expected to discuss. I don't think it will ever really be "elevator conversation", but I think it will be something you can talk about in the open with your friends and acquaintances.
Yeah, I'm not going to say that I consider sex to be disgusting or anything like that, but it's like taking a shit: I know everybody does it but I don't want to hear how, I don't want to imagine it or think of it, thank you very much.
If everybody kept their sexual lives to themselves there would be no talk about what fetishes are degenerate simply because nobody would know what your fetishes are.
Sorry, I don't mean I consider sex to be disgusting, I consider hearing about people I don't care having sex disgusting. I think sex is wonderful but personal.
I feel most people think like that:
No talking openly about sex = being shy / narrow minded
Equating taking a dump to the strongest social bond we form in our lives, and for most defines us and our lives more than anything else is... poor choice of words to be polite, very very polite.
Christianity had caused a millenia-lasting trauma on western civilization due to its views on sexuality as something sinful and necessary evil, and those views are unfortunately still part of our society to large extent. It will still take a few more generations to undo what has been done, if we keep the current course.
By no mean I do advocate for some extroverty discussion about everything with everybody, I don't get why people immediately get this knee-jerk reactions and think only in extremes, but some healthy middle ground would benefit us all. Actually I get it, it comes from our messed-up legacy from religions.
Discussion about healthy sex life, what it means to live good life, about death etc. should be definitely part of upbringing. There wouldn't be these clueless masses of teenagers/young adults most of us were part of sometime in our lives.
> Christianity had caused a millenia-lasting trauma on western civilization due to its views on sexuality
Just curious: What's your take on non-Christian cultures? They seem to have had a variety of views on the acceptability of homosexual sex, polygamy, age of consent, the line between endogamy and incest, acceptability of eunuchs/"third sexes", bride price v. dowery, etc. etc. but none of them really come close a modern Western sexual ethic of consent. Why not, in your view?
Because modern Western sexuality is only possible on the foundation that women have 1. equal legal rights (especially divorce), 2. have jobs and their own savings, and 3. have control over their bodies via contraceptives (and abortion). Plus 4. transportation and cities allows escape from the "everyone knows everyone" small village.
I basically agree, but if modern sexuality is impossible without feminism and feminism is impossible with modern technology (the pill, good infant mortality) and dense urban life, it’s silly to blame Christianity for not having had a modern sexuality. If anything, Christianity is the religion that adapted to the new circumstances the fastest, and most thoroughly. It’s just hard to see that if your context is “I grew up evangelical and it sucked” (which is a fair thing to think!).
This isn't a contest who is less bad, or which religion has/had least negative impact on this topic.
I judge only society I live(d) in, which is western, and chilling effects of christianity-based teachings are all over the place, everywhere, in some form in everybody. Sexuality is still mostly tabu, although it doesn't make any sense since we all lose because of this. As somebody deeply within this society and surrounded by christianity, and in the same time outside of christianity since birth it is very obvious for me.
Its also not about bad-people-taken-good-words-and-twisted-them-in-the-past topic, which can be applied on many things in past and present.
Look how desperately unprepared teenagers are for sexual life. It takes a lot of time for many people to discover who they really are, what they want, need, can't stand etc. This is part of growing up, but society should help as much as it can, and I don't see this happening on scale appropriate to importance of this.
This can be part of much broader topic where I see our education systems (aka the process that should prepare us to be full active members of society) fail us to teach basic things - sexuality, communication, team work, understanding and developing yourself into best version of you possible, or even how freakin' taxes (or loans) work.
Since it's something private which I consider to be uncouth, I don't want to hear about it. I don't want to think about penises, vaginas, butts, etc. It's just disgusting. What's so hard about that?
Equating having sex with what is a completely normal bodily function we have to do once a day was indeed a bad choice of words.
So according to your way of seeing things we should be openly talking about how we fuck, how I'd like to fuck you, how I got fucked by that guy the other day. No thank you. Keep it to yourself. There's no middle ground. What would the middle ground look like? I want to put my pee pee in your poo poo?
I think it's a bit unhealthy to find penises and vaginas disgusting, but I wouldn't want to discourage somebody from talking about how they feel, if that's how they feel.
If we want to encourage more openly talking about sex, perhaps it's only fair that we also support people openly talking about what they find disgusting.
There is some healthy biological basis behind a disgust reaction to either, as genital contact carries diseases too, depending on how it's done and the history. In that regard, handling faeces is quite similar to close encounters with gentalia - either can be safer or unsafe depending how it's done, and both are a natural part of life which is healthy in moderation.
I'm sympathetic to sex-positivity and intellectual intentions, but I don't have a sense of how well this aspect of human sexuality fits into HN right now, so I'd only like to suggest a few ideas, from trying to be considerate:
* Researching and learning about human sexuality is good.
* Not everyone has the same ideas about sex-positivity, and, in general, that's the individual's personal business.
* At least in the US (I don't know about other places), we have a long history of sex/gender being involved in unfairness and in making environments unwelcoming/hostile to some, including in the workplace, and we haven't fully fixed that. For that reason, in some environments, such as in the workplace, I think most sex-related stuff should be off-limits for mention. Given the history and unresolved problems, it's too easy to inadvertently be unwelcoming.
* Also regarding the workplace, a company doesn't want to be sued, and so probably doesn't want any unsanctioned mentions of sex/gender at all. (For example, HR might flip out, were the URL to which this HN post links being passed around in company email accounts.)
* This post seems accidentally juxtaposed with yesterday's (?) comments insensitivity, on a top post about a female computer scientist who was instrumental in the historic scientific first of black hole imagery. HN is not a single coherent identity, but HN coming right off that comments poo-show, with a taxonomy of reddit porn, doesn't seem like the best timing for having the work perceived as the author did.
To be honest, I was afraid to post it here (or rather: discussions that it is going to attract). But I am positively surprised to see discussions.
Again, sex-positivity is not about talking about sex everywhere (posted in this thread "10 things sex-positivity isn't" from Everyday Feminism). And, in most circumstances, a workplace is not a place for discussions about sex (unless we know that everyone is comfortable with that topic, which is rarely the case; and you can be sex-positive yet not interested in talking publicly).
HN is not a workplace. If you open it in the workplace, you do it at your own responsibility. Also, I provided a content warning to make sure if someone can stop before it's too late for them.
Thank you. I think of HN as having significant influence on the dotcom workplace and culture, so I wanted to get a few ideas in at the front. Some of the comments on the black hole imagery post seemed unfortunate to me, so I might've said more here than was necessary.
I wrote a description in the main file, so I don't have to add much here. Though, I am open to feedback (especially for the graphical presentation, as the taxonomy & subreddit list is not mine).
Even though I like and use D3.js a lot, it is my first post using ObservableHQ. It seemed to me to be a nice choice for this kind of content. Considered bl.ocks.org or repo/GH-page, but I think ObservableHQ makes it easier to edit and share.
This is neat, however (here comes the harsh critic) :
- Rendering a simple tree like this would work just as well, if better, in text only format (like the output of the "tree" command on linux) : https://justpaste.it/6r9un
- The classification also seems a bit manual and arbitrary.
Maybe giving each node a weight would make d3 worth using ?
Maybe scrap the subscribers of each subreddit, and make a force directed "map of reddit nsfw" ?
Your skills seem wasted on this if you're good at d3
Your text-based tree is nice, but it comes with pros and cons, as every datq visualization. In fact, it was my first idea, but I felt I need to create something better for exploring the high-level structure.
If you wanted to do more than just a straight tree: For any pair of subreddits draw a line between the subs weighted according to the number of commenters that commented in both subreddits. Maybe doing a similar graph with people that post in both subreddits would be interesting too. I expect both variants to yield a somewhat more natural grouping of subreddits than an artifically curated list, but making it readable and explorable would be a challenge.
If I were to do so, I know more suitable methods, vide description from https://github.com/stared/tagoverflow/. Without such normalization, it won't work given that there are networking with different orders of magnitude of users.
Right now don't have much time for this project, and well - I am this kind of person that has a few dozen times for idea than time, not the other way. :)
This is very interesting! I was wondering what the lack of more LGBT (specifically gay) subreddits is due to and why they are grouped the way they are? What I mean is I know there are are a number more gay-related subreddits and I found it interesting that while straight porn got broken down into it's categories all LGBT porn was lumped together under high-level categories (ie. gay/lesbian/transgender/etc).
Edit: Look like I misunderstood what "nsfw_data_source_urls" really was (I thought it was a list of urls to specific images, not a list of subs broken down like it is). I thought it was used to train not the source of the categorization. Given that I understand the grouping more.
It would be great if you could overlay the number of subscribers of a subreddit in it. It would be a neat way to see what is most prominent. Also, and I don't know if this information is possible to get, if you could get intersections of users in different subreddits, you could see a graph of which subreddits are most tightly connected.
Website is unfortunately unusable on mobile. The decided to disable zoom, and the right side of the tree font size is about 2px high. I've got good eyes but no amount of squinting is going to make that happen.
Safari ignores directives by the website to disable zoom.
Lots of site owners disable zoom because they think they know best when it comes to content-size. Disabling zoom also makes the site slightly more responsive because when a touch occurs, the browser doesn't have to wait a few hundred milliseconds to see if a 2nd finger is going to be touched to start a zoom action.
And thank god for that, there were so many sites that disabled zoom for seemingly no reason, and somehow it was always the ones with tiny text or images.
Because it's a webside dedicated to writing interactive data-visualizations with tools like d3.js with an iPython-style notebook interface. Programmability is the whole point.
The link doesn’t contain any pictures, but it does have words inside a diagram. Here is the full quote of the content warning from the link:
>> Begin quote
Content warning: Explicit names of sexual practices (some are niche/fetish and one can find them distasteful or triggering). Most channels contain sexually explicit images. None of these links is an endorsement.
Subreddits are clickable. Though, think twice before you do so. :)
This is the kind of important explorative research that probably hasn't been done extensively or truthfully before, and yet shows deep insight into how the human mind works.
It's worth noting that this only contains subreddits with explicit NSWF images. There are also who knows how many subreddits that are sexual in nature, but text-only!
> yet shows deep insight into how the human mind works.
or .... shows shallow insight into how the human mind organizes a vast array of similar information into buckets of similar sub-traits, which really has been done to death.
i don't know what this data set is showing sociologically. it's just a scrape of data and not very well presented. that said, nice project but go on and give it something else.
It’s a classification. It’d be interesting to see the size of the different subreddits too (number of subscribers and number of threads/replies/posts).
Would be interesting to see a graph of how things get reposted between subreddits. Also, I think you missed one quite relevant category: "perspectives". In many cases, it's just about the angle the picture was shot from. Perhaps it's worth including in your research?
The linked article contains a hell of a lot of stuff showing men thinking about women in ways that women would not like to be thought about (en masse at least). I'm completely against political correctness, I think Codes of Conducts on Github are progressive nonsense, but I don't really think this is a pleasant thread to be on HN, and I don't think it contributes to a welcoming atmosphere on HN for women and other non-male genders.
Not sure what you expect. Apart from purely illegal content like CP, what's the reason not to use Reddit? For anything else Reddit is great for topic communities.
Reddit is doing more and more content restrictions lately.
If I was starting a community for something controversial or borderline illegal (sex acts, drug discussion, discussing pirate movies, radio spoofers, bomb design, etc.), Reddit wouldn't be the place I'd choose anymore.
Wow, I'm quite shocked that reddit allows so much extreme violent content.. It's readily accessible, even advertised as subreddits, and there aren't any warnings or self-help resources. If people get into that stuff, which is readily addictive, I would think it has significant potential for psychological harm, especially for teenagers. One can argue that it's possible to compartmentalize it, but I doubt it since the mind/brain is a single highly integrated system..
Something I wonder about is ... if people can commonly imagine in a "minds eye" [0], why would they use porn?
My ex-wife and I got along fine when we first met. But it wasn't a match made in heaven. We didn't kick boots [1] very often after getting legally hitched. In the dry months I went back to using the internet porn, which i despised/despise, but horny is horny. I would have rather have an imagination [3] or a partner, than 2-dimensional pixels on a screen.
Reddit has vastly more subreddits of pictures of naked women than of naked men. Mostly this is a scarcity thing: penises are a dime a dozen; $$$ is enough to motivate some women to show skin for men who they otherwise have no interest in.
Many young women have vast amounts of interest from men. One of my female friends, who isn't particularly attached to her partners, has a string of ex-boyfriends who obsess over her. She's said something about her fitting the 'wild-woman' archetype, whatever that means.
When women get pregnant they have a long-term project on their hands, so evolution has decided that women get to decide who to father their likely children. (not all human societies respect womens' desires -- arranged marriages, etc. most societies don't help girls appreciate that boys' attraction is entirely different). Feudal societies disposed of excess men with conscription and pointless wars.
Women whose best assets don't show up on the pixels sometimes have to put more effort into fishing for males than those with looks, but they still find partners. A friend of mine, who did not reciprocate my attraction for her, hooked me up with her not-particularly-choosy friend. I did not find the friend particularly attractive, but it was complicated at the time. It was traumatic, and completely unsatisfying.
Men who have money get more attention from women who market their looks. But money is not required for female attention. Some men have figured out how to be smooth, and develop a magnetism for female attention.
Other men have no idea what it is that makes them so annoying to the other gender. Some of these men have latched on to the incel label [2], which seems to feed on itself in a downward spiral.
I suspect many of the redditors who build the subreddits featured in this "tree of reddit sex life" would much rather have partners, than to spend their free hours cultivating collections of pixelated women.
I noted a comment here recently -- one of you fellas told about secretly fantasizing about a coworker (iirc), and that the coworker[s] wouldn't know about the fella's inner fantasies about her/them.
If only 1/50 is an aphantasiac, that's still millions of men who don't fantasize. It's easy for them to turn to the pixelated women to get themselves off when they get horny. But I know men who have a fully-functional imagination, who use porn anyways.
My question for the gallery: imagination is better than porn, is it not? Why do some men put so much effort into their collection of pixelated women? Perhaps it's a compulsion, not so different from heroin?
> I suspect many of the redditors who build the subreddits featured in this "tree of reddit sex life" would much rather have partners, than to spend their free hours cultivating collections of pixelated women.
You're projecting your own reasons for turning to porn onto others. Many people with partners still enjoy porn.
> imagination is better than porn, is it not?
Why limit yourself when you can have both? Imagination works better when it has more to source from.
Not that there can't be other reasons for avoiding porn, of course.
> Why do some men put so much effort into their collection of pixelated women? Perhaps it's a compulsion, not so different from heroin?
People put (often immense) effort into collecting all kinds of stuff that they are pleased to see, not sure what makes this different or comparable to heroin addiction.
I don't need visualization to fantasize. I guess what's happening in in mind is just different from how the rest of the people do see/feel/perceive it.
The interesting thing though, is that I never fantasize about real people, but I'm unsure whether or not it's related to aphansasia. If I fantasize about my girlfriend (regardless of if I have one or not in the moment), I'll focus only on the "concept" of the girlfriend.
Like in my dreams, people in my fantasies have no defined face or body. They're just bodies that I identifies as concepts (random person, colleague of type X, brother/sister, girlfriend, cute girl at the bar, etc.)
Since I use those concepts without any actual "implementation" (pardon the programming metaphor), and since I can only focus on the emotions or sentiments I have from the (fantasized or not) relations I have with those conceptual human beings, I have no use to associate them to real people.
> Perhaps it's a compulsion, not so different from heroin?
You're not far off as it is often referenced much like any addition. It's also stated that men are more visual so seeing might what helps them use their imaginations.
I agree that the mind has the biggest part in sexuality and imagination has a bigger role.
> It's also stated that men are more visual so seeing might what helps them use their imaginations.
As further evidence of this, look at the fanfiction community, a community with a large focus on literary depiction of romance and sex that's dominated by women (at least on the author side, where stats are easy to get).
"While human sexuality is a delicate subject, I deeply believe it should be discussed (vide my Dating for Nerds series) rather than shunned as a taboo topic. Some discussion about ethics and implications of using such data were covered in What I learned from building an AI that generates porn by David Mack."
Until it becomes socially acceptable to talk openly about, we need more people going out on a limb and being open in this way.