Those straw man “Commies” are still giving you a hard time, eh Radek?

That’s true. So, if alcohol doesn’t help – try hormonal therapy.

I’m not entirely sure whether abb1’s being sarcastic here (given the context, I suspect sarcasm).

But anyway, there is a strong hormonal component to sexual desire. There can be lots of reasons for lack of sexual desire: often it’s to do with problems in the relationship, but other times it’s a symptom of a medical problem. And if it’s a medical problem, leaving it untreated can be dangerous – you might be in for worse symptoms as the condition progresses.

Having said that, I am alarmed by the prospect of high/low sexual desire being medicalized. When loss of desire is just one symptom of a condition with lots of other bad effects, that’s one thing. But it’s a further step to regard high or low desire, on its own, as being a “disease”. With modern medicine, a person’s desire for sex can be altered, either up or down – but usually at the risk of hazardous side-effects. So there is an ethical dillema: if the problem is that the couple’s levels of desire are mismatched, who if, anyone, should be medically altered?

Clearly, most women do experience sexual desire at some point in their lives – so the idea that women don’t have sexual desires isn’t going to fly. But conversely, I think it may be wrong to expect women to have typical male levels of sexual desire. (One of the danger in that is that failiure to be as horny as guys might become medicalized)

(As for me, personally – I’m not in the mood to do anything all winter. But that’s because the lack of sunlight effects me very badly. I’d consider this a medical symptom, rather than try to claim any moral superiority).

an insidious agency, not of this world, that resonates in the bleats of the lost sheep

I gotta say that’s good. Sounds like a line of lyrics from Black Sabbath or Slayer.

And yes, unfortunetly I’m a thorough materialist. Not a spiritual bone in my body.

Sorry for the sarcasm at your (or your last comment’s) expense; it puzzles me as well, that the same people who never fail to condemn the “homosexual lifestyle” (hedonism, promiscuity, and irresponsibility being the usual take) are equally horrified by any attempt to model a different lifestyle within that community, one built on tradition, commitment, and responsibility – among many other things.

That my ability to marry the partner of my choice (I live in Canada) somehow devalues someone else’s heterosexual relationship is something I have yet to be even partially convinced of.

You must be looking at a very old copy, stostosto; we’ve updated it to include “The inversion of the heterosexual paradigm and the destruction of the traditional family.”

Ah yes, I also don’t understand the hysteric anti-gay corner. What, the fact that gays too want to form families, even based on the conventional institution of marriage, somehow is an attack on traditional family values?

Looks more like the ultimate triumph for them, innit? Or, to paraphrase you: The inversion of the homosexual paradigm and the destruction of the traditional gay lifestyle.

So take Jesus’s advice, and get lost.

The secular capitalist steps up to bat, I see. Too bad than you can’t appreciate that, without a core of family values, the free market is like a soulless automaton. The virus of fascism (or communism, which you so fear) infects it in short order, leading to a “system crash”.

For my part, I find it is instructive to listen to people’s lustful fantasies because there is an insidious agency, not of this world, that resonates in the bleats of the lost sheep. Make of that what you want.

-So yer just barracking from the stands then mate? You’re in more dire need of a ******* than any CT commentator in history.

Classy, real classy.

And what’s with this reluctance to use my web name, referring coyly to “comment #70” instead? Is this liberal “reverse prudishness”, that refuses every sentence from Scripture? A secular religion indeed, with vacuum cleaners as sacramental implements!

But things also change over time – I get the impression that there are more horny young things now than when I was a youf. Or maybe the frank discussions have just become more public. But I’m definitely hearing from more women who want lots of sex. Oten erratically – sex all night for a few nights, then nothing for a month or two. But counterexamples exist, in the case of one ex, sex every day, at least twice, all the time. I was very happy about the sex while I was with her…

Housework is definitely one of those “lowest standards does nothing” things, and women are really heavily socialised to have higher standards than men. Having lived in share houses for the aforementioned 15 years I’ve seen a lot of different standards at work. From Schmoo who firmly believed that eventually the fungus would clean his dishes for him through to Katherine cleaning the toilet every time she used it. And I mean every single fscking time. Arrrgh!

Housework is much easier to deal with theoretically, but harder to do in practice IME. People just don’t notice dirt until it hits their personal threshold, and if someone else has a lower one.. they never reach their threshold. My best solution so far has been to pay the one with the lower threshold to clean “for me”. She was happier, I was happier (“will pay to avoid nagging”). But in a cohabiting relationship that’s much harder, and I’ve found that I just have to clean things whether I think they’re dirty or not, or better still talk through a deal where I do obvious stuff (wash dishes, deal with compost/recycling/rubbish etc) and she does stuff that I can’t see the need for until she goes away for a month or so.

But sex… one thing I find hard is always being the one who initiates sex. Having the higher sex drive is like that though. But combined with pressure not to masturbate (very common), things get tricky. I dislike the manipulation feeling of deliberately withholding sex until she asks for it, but always being the one asking and getting rejected also wears thin. I suspect only lesbians experience that, as even the most sexually enthusiastic women I’ve known still had lots of experience of getting asked for sex. Maybe women are just less willing to risk rejection… that might explain LBD too.

That’s true. So, if alcohol doesn’t help – try hormonal therapy.

So yer just barracking from the stands then mate? You’re in more dire need of a blowjob than any CT commentator in history.

Uh, no. Not exclusively, at least.

You and #72 get props for the civility and the depth of the criticism, at any rate.