A More Intimate Love of Wisdom
by Jason Stotts
If you’re going to be in the Atlanta area over Memorial Day weekend, definitely check out ATLOSCon! They’ve got a great line up of people and it’s a really great conference.
You can find their full schedule of events here.
Hopefully next year things will work out and I’ll be able to attend.
by Jason Stotts
Nude beaches in California have been under attack and many historically nude beaches have lost their designation. The state of California is now wasting taxpayer money patrolling these beaches and citing people for nudity. This is a travesty. As I wrote in my essay on nude beaches, being nude in nature, especially on the beach, makes more sense than being clothed. It is only our shame of our bodies that we get from our christian culture that prevents us from fully enjoying our humanity. If you’re in California and want to make a difference, see the below and help in the fight to bring nude beaches back to California.
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NATURIST ACTION COMMITTEE
ACTION ALERT
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Copyright 2013 by the Naturist Action Committee, which is responsible for its content. Permission is granted for the posting, forwarding or redistribution of this message, provided that it is reproduced in its entirety and without alteration.
DATE: April 28, 2013
SUBJECT: California
TO: Naturists and other concerned citizens
Dear Naturist,
This is an Action Alert from the Naturist Action Committee. NAC is asking for your immediate involvement to support an effort to have the State of California create officially designated areas for clothing-optional recreation in state parks.
ACTION SUMMARY
1. Attend a meeting of the California Park and Recreation Commission on May 17.
2. Contact the Commission in writing.
CALIFORNIA STATE PARK AND RECREATION COMMISSION
The California State Park and Recreation Commission is NOT the same as the State Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR). Under California law, the Commission has specific duties and authorizations, including:
- the approval of general plans for units of the State Park System,
- classifying units of the System,
- establishing general policies for the DPR Director,
- recommending to the Director a comprehensive recreation policy for the state.
In the wake of last year’s scandal involving the California Department of Parks and Recreation, NAC is looking for the appointed State Park bureaucracy to assert some leadership. The Commission has had the authority and the responsibility all along to establish general policy and to recommend policy to DPR, and that’s what NAC is seeking.
ACTION 1: ATTEND COMMISSION’S PUBLIC MEETING ON MAY 17
If you’re near the Monterey Bay area of California (or you can arrange to be there), NAC requests that you attend a public meeting of the State Park and Recreation Commission that is scheduled to be held in Santa Cruz on Friday, May 17, 2013.
DATE: Friday, May 17, 2013
TIME: 9:00 a.m.
LOCATION:
Forest Conference Center
Hilton Santa Cruz/Scotts Valley
6001 La Madrona Drive
Santa Cruz, California 95060
The official public notice for the meeting may be viewed at:
http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=27397
The Commission’s agenda for the meeting is available at: http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=27398
The naturist issue is not on the agenda for the meeting. Regardless, we need to let the Commission know of our concerns and our expectations. Members of the public will have an opportunity to give brief statements during the public comment portion of the meeting. Whether you speak or not, your presence at the meeting is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to lend support to the message of naturists. We seek the setting aside of areas for clothing-optional recreation in State Park units.
There are few items on the meeting agenda for May 17, and the meeting is likely to move quickly. Please plan to be at the Hilton Santa Cruz/Scotts Valley in Santa Cruz no later than a half hour before the start of the meeting. Those who wish to speak must sign up to do so before the meeting commences.
The Commission has met infrequently and irregularly for the past four years, but NAC has been at every single one of the Commission’s meetings during that period of time. With your help and participation, we’ll make a significant showing at this meeting, too.
If you’re planning to attend the meeting, please contact:
NAC board member Allen Baylis
(714) 962-0915
or NAC executive director Bob Morton
(512) 282-6621
ACTION 2: WRITE TO THE COMMISSION
If you’re unable to attend the meeting, you can still help. NAC asks that you write to the Commission. Send your comments by e-mail, fax or surface mail. Those who will be at the meeting on May 17 are also encouraged to write.
WHO SHOULD WRITE?
NAC is requesting ALL NATURISTS and other concerned individuals to contact California officials on this important matter, regardless of your place of residence. California understands the importance of out-of-state visitors who come to enjoy the state’s beaches, lakes and streams. The opportunity to provide diverse recreational opportunities applies to those visitors, as well as to California residents. While all are encouraged to make their voices heard, the participation of Californians is, of course, particularly important.
Send a letter, a fax or an e-mail. Phone calls will likely be ineffective in this specific context.
California State Park & Recreation Commission
PO Box 942896
Sacramento, CA 94296
FAX: (916) 654-6374
Louis Nastro, Assistant to the Commission
E-MAIL: LNastro@parks.ca.gov
Send a copy to:
California Department of Natural Resources
Natural Resources Agency
1416 Ninth Street, Suite 1311
Sacramento, CA 95814
FAX: (916) 653-8102
E-MAIL: secretary@resources.ca.gov
NAC encourages you to send copies of your faxes and paper mail to:
NAC, PO Box 132, Oshkosh, WI 54903.
Send copies of your e-mails to: CA@naturistaction.org
WHAT SHOULD YOU SAY?
When you write:
a) Be polite.
b) Be known. Give your name and address. If you are a California resident or a frequent visitor to California, be sure to point that out. Anonymous letters have very little impact.
c) Be focused. Keep your correspondence brief and on target.
d) Be positive. Remember that we’re trying to ENCOURAGE the Parks Department to do something. Please do not take a scolding tone.
e) Be clear. Say that you SUPPORT the designation of clothing-optional areas in units of the State Park System.
f) Be sure to make a request that your correspondence (letter, fax, e-mail) be included in the permanent public record of the California Park and Recreation Commission meeting of May 17, 2013.
Additional talking / writing points:
1) On March 25, 2013, a state oversight agency, the Little Hoover Commission, issued a comprehensive review of the California State Park system. Among other conclusions, the report says that DPR lacks the flexibility to be responsive to the diversity of its users and supporters. We must encourage the Commission to respond positively to the deficiencies identified by the report.
2) Our focus is not exclusively on San Onofre State Beach or any other individual park. Although San Onofre was the first State Park unit at which DPR killed its policy for managing clothing-optional recreation, it has not been the last. Ticketing for mere nudity in State Park units has spread throughout the entire state of California. A unified policy that manages FOR a significant group of park users is exactly what the Commission is responsible for creating, but it has not done so for clothing-optional users. The present lack of a comprehensive statewide policy threatens ALL clothing-optional areas in California State Park units.
3) Clothing-optional recreation is a diverse use that’s well supported by the public, yet Parks Department policy against clothing-optional recreation is completely out of sync with public sentiment and the expressed preferences of California residents. A public opinion survey on this topic was commissioned in 2009 by the Naturist Education Foundation and was conducted by the prestigious polling firm of Zogby International. In that statewide poll:
79 percent of Californians believe people should be allowed to enjoy nude sunbathing on a beach or other location that is designated for that purpose.
60 percent of Californians say that they are not offended by the nonsexual nudity of others.
62 percent of Californians agree that the California Department of Parks and Recreation should exercise the legal authority it presently has to designate clothing-optional areas in state parks.
View details of the 2009 NEF California Poll:
www.naturisteducation.org/nef.ca.poll.2009/
4) For thirty years, the Department’s Cahill Policy allowed a means to manage for clothing-optional recreation in units of the State Park system. The nullification of the Cahill Policy has left the department with no statewide policy to address a form of recreation that’s obviously popular with the public. It’s the duty of the Commission to address matters of policy.
5) Some Park and Rec Commission members have suggested that a positive response for those who seek clothing-optional recreation in state parks somehow requires a new legislative solution. That view is incorrect. Title 14, Section 4322 of California Code of Regulations already gives DPR the power and authority to set aside areas for clothing-optional use. What the Department needs NOW is policy guidance from the Commission to do what the Department is already allowed to do TODAY.
MORE INFORMATION AND RESOURCES
Additional information and links are available, along with this NAC Action Alert on the web site of the Naturist Action Committee.
Select “Alerts” and find this NAC Action Alert under Current Alerts, or use this convenient shortcut: www.naturistaction.org/caparks Among the material on the NAC site, you’ll find the complete text of the Little Hoover Report.
PLEASE HELP NAC TO CONTINUE HELPING NATURISTS!
The Naturist Action Committee is the volunteer nonprofit political adjunct to The Naturist Society. NAC exists to advance and protect the rights and interests of naturists throughout North America. Fighting for the clothing-optional recreational use of public land is expensive. To do its job, NAC relies entirely on the voluntary generosity of supporters like you.
After you’ve made your plans to attend the Commission meeting on May 17 and/or contacted the officials at the Commission and the Natural Resources Agency, please take a moment to send a donation to:
NAC
PO Box 132
Oshkosh, WI 54903
Or call toll free (800) 886-7230 to donate by phone using your MasterCard, Visa or Discover Card. Or use your credit card to make a convenient online donation: www.naturistaction.org/donate/
Thank you for choosing to make a difference!
Naturally,
Bob Morton
Executive Director
Naturist Action Committee
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Naturist Action Committee (NAC) – PO Box 132, Oshkosh, WI 54903
Executive Dir. Bob Morton – execdir@naturistaction.org
Board Member Allen Baylis – rab@baylislaw.com
Board Member Charles Harris – carlopianoforte@gmail.com
Online Rep. Dennis Kirkpatrick – naturist@sunclad.com
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by Jason Stotts
The deadline for CatalystCon West speaker submissions is coming up soon and I’m planning on attending after hearing so many good things about the prior Catalystcons. However, I need some feedback on my proposal. I feel like it’s just a little off and needs some fine-tuning. Take a look at it and if you have any suggestions, let me know!
Requirements http://catalystcon.com/call-for-speakers/
Speakers should prepare for sessions that run an hour and ten minutes, including at least 20 minutes of open discussion. Panel submissions should consist of no more than four speakers (including a moderator, if applicable) and all speakers for panel sessions must be confirmed prior to submission.
Speaker submissions should be sent in plain text in the body of your email. Email all submissions to: CatalystConSubmissions@gmail.com.
Session description: (250 word max)
Speaker Information
Name: Jason Stotts
Email: Jason(at)JasonStotts.com
URL: www.JasonStotts.com
Facebook: www.Facebook.com/ErosophiaBlog
Twitter: @jstotts
Bio: (200 word max)
Photo (300-500px wide)
Prior Conferences:
- Conference of the Atlanta Objectivist Society (ATLOSCon): 2012, 2011
- Chicago Objectivist Society Conference (COSCon): 2011
- University of Northern Florida Philosophy Conference: 2006
AV requirements: None.
Session Information
Title of Session: Reclaiming the Sexual Moral Narrative
The war against sex rages on with fundamentalist christians on the offensive and us on the defensive, against the ropes. But, it doesn’t have to be this way. The weapon they are using against us, against which we have no defense is morality: they have claimed the moral high-ground and we are defenseless without it. Consequently, in the field of sexual ethics, we see nothing but a bleak landscape: prohibitions against this and condemnations about that. But, isn’t there more? Couldn’t sexual ethics actually tell us how to incorporate sex into our lives in a healthy way that serves to improve our lives? It can and it should. Moreover, it was our ceding of the moral high ground to the anti-sex side that weakened our position and forced us to always argue on the defensive. By reclaiming the moral narrative, we can not only have better sex lives, but we can help to reclaim sexual ethics from those who hate the body and our enjoyment of it. We can, in one fell swoop, improve our lives and put the arguments about sex back on fundamental principles.
In this talk I’m going to lay out what a philanthropic (pro-human) sexual ethic looks like and show how this foundation can restructure the field. I will also show how restructuring the arguments in different fields of sexual ethics can take us from being on the defensive to making real headway in the culture. We may not be able to “win” against pundits who would never change their minds anyway, but if we can change the culture, it doesn’t matter. We will have won what we really wanted: a world where sex is a real value in human life.
by Jason Stotts
My very first blog post was nearly 8 years ago on May 8th, 2005, meaning that Erosophia is about to turn eight. My own birthday is in exactly two weeks and I’ll be turning 30. As far as birthdays go, 30 is an interesting one: you’re definitely an adult and have been for a while. You can’t imagine yourself as still a “20-something” anymore, college ended more than 5 years ago, and so on. It’s real, my life is here and I’m living it. Not that I didn’t think I was before, but much of your life when you’re younger is about getting ready to “live your life” in some amorphous future. Well, when you turn 30, your future is here and you can’t pretend it isn’t anymore.
Blogging is interesting. I never set out to be a blogger. In fact, I only started writing a blog on a lark. Then, I just sort of kept writing and at some point things got interesting. Somewhere along the line people started reading and now some 15,000 unique people visit Erosophia every month, in addition to the hundreds who subscribe via RSS. As Erosophia has gotten more popular, I find that I need to keep increasing hosting and bandwidth to keep up with traffic. It’s obviously a good problem to have, but it also requires money to solve.
Not only that, but in order to keep writing, a person needs spiritual fuel: he needs to know his work is good and that it is having a positive impact in people’s lives.There’s no reason for me to write and share it with the world if it’s not helping people, so if you want me to keep writing, let me know it’s making a difference.
The point of this post, then is to ask you to help support Erosophia. It is also, though, to ask you to help support me. I’m asking you, in essence, to trade values with me. Erosophia and my writing is a value to you if you’re reading this (if it’s not, what are you doing here?). So, I’m asking that you take a minute and help support my work and me. Ideally, you should donate $829, one for each of Erosophia’s posts. If that’s a little much for you, then donate $30 for my thirtieth birthday. If not that, then at least $8 for Erosophia’s birthday. If you can’t donate monetarily, I ask that you at least take the time to leave a comment here or write me if my work has helped you in your life. You can also, if you want something a little different, buy me a birthday present from my list on Amazon.
If you don’t have the money, please at least write to me or help support Erosophia in some way.
You can get me a present through my Amazon Birthday list or feel free to buy me an Amazon Gift Card! I love Amazon and buy a ton of stuff from there.
If you want to write me, for this or any reason, do so at Jason(at)JasonStotts.com.
Minimally, like Erosophia on Facebook.
If my work has been a value to you at all, please take a minute and let me know.
by Jason Stotts
I’ll be attending this event on Thursday and you should come check it out if you’re in the Temecula area.
I Am Not A Christian So Why Do I Act Like One?
by Darrel Ray author of Sex & God
Thursday, May 2, 2013 7:00 PM
Why do non-believers continue to behave like Christians when it comes to their sexual beliefs?
Darrel Ray, author of Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality, will tell us how and why non-believers continue to think and behave like Christians when it comes to sexuality.
I saw Darrel speak a couple of years ago when his book The God Virus had just come out. It’s a pretty good book and definitely a good metaphor, even if I think the metaphor is a little stretched in places. Either way, Darrel is a good speaker and it should be a really interesting talk!
by Jason Stotts
I love CollegeHumor!
by Jason Stotts
When I first started studying philosophy, I was surprised at how committed I was to beliefs that I had never really considered. In fact, I seemed to be trapped in a web of ideas that I had obtained through the culture through a kind of mental osmosis. I was committed to this and that, but had never considered the issues and whether I was right to be so committed. Now, some of the beliefs I stayed committed to after reflection, like my beliefs in the sovereignty of the individual, the value of capitalism, and the ethics of egoism. With these views, I came to understand them at a much better level and in a clearer way. I no longer believed them merely because I had believed them at one time, I had reasons for my beliefs and arguments to support them.
Other beliefs, I shed completely. I was never a religious person: I had always questioned the existence of any sort of god, but I still thought that there was a possibility that there might be one. Moreover, I thought of religion as a benevolent force and as something that, while I didn’t participate in it, was a force for good in the world. This, obviously, I have seen past to the true nature of misanthropic nature of religion (especially the Abrahamic religions).
Another belief that I used to hold, and which may surprise some of my readers, is that there was something wrong with “the homosexuals.” I didn’t know many gay people growing up and had this vague idea that they were somehow “broken” in some way. Of course, how could I not think this, since they were living in a violation of nature and flatly flaunting the biological functions of their bodies? Yet, once I learned even just a little about human anatomy and psychology, I quickly realized how silly and ignorant homophobia really is.
Unfortunately, few people ever question their beliefs and I think one reason is that they are afraid to see how little justification they really had for them to begin with and how ignorantly they had actually been living their lives. However, ignorance (lacking knowledge) is not necessarily a moral failure. While there are some things that a person can reasonably be expected to know, and evasion of things that one should know is a moral failure, one cannot be expected to know everything. The moral obligation a person does have is to be constantly learning and growing as a person and to not evade looking into issues that will impact their lives.
I preamble like this to set the context for this: one of my major realizations as I started to study sex in a serious way was how little I actually knew about it. The more I learn about sex, the more I realize I didn’t know and how much of what I did “know” was actually just wrong. Not only that, but my thinking about sex was locked into our cultural assumptions and a very definite conception about what sex is and should be.
I think the ignorance that surrounds sex is absolutely astounding. People tend to think that the way we think about and view sex here in our culture and time is the way it’s always been and the way it has to be. That’s just silly. For example, did you know that:
- In ancient Greece, males were the symbols of beauty and females were not?
- There are cultures where the family name passes through the female line, because any child of the woman is definitely in the genetic family whereas a child of a man may or may not be (this solves the problem of lineage).
- Biologically our bodies evolved to be polysexual (non-monogamous) and the evidence for this is overwhelming (cf: the coronal ridge of the human penis, the size of the human testicles, the different functions of sperm, the cervical crypts in the vagina, the signaling function of breasts, etc).
- Men who do not orgasm frequently enough are much more likely to die of prostate cancer?
- Men have not always been the more sexually aggressive sex? In some cultures (including our own), women were the more sexually active sex and the sexual aggressors.
- That in ancient Greece, a man who only had sex with women or only had attractions to women would have been a cultural outcast?
I think that people who don’t consider sex from a broader perspective are simply being ridiculous. How can you claim any sort of legitimacy about a sexual position when all you understand is your own culture in your own time and place?
Consider this article by Alyssa Goldstein “When Women Wanted Sex Much More Than Men: And how the stereotype flipped.“
In the 1600s, a man named James Mattock was expelled from the First Church of Boston. His crime? It wasn’t using lewd language or smiling on the sabbath or anything else that we might think the Puritans had disapproved of. Rather, James Mattock had refused to have sex with his wife for two years. Though Mattock’s community clearly saw his self-deprivation as improper, it is quite possible that they had his wife’s suffering in mind when they decided to shun him. The Puritans believed that sexual desire was a normal and natural part of human life for both men and women (as long as it was heterosexual and confined to marriage), but that women wanted and needed sex more than men. A man could choose to give up sex with relatively little trouble, but for a woman to be so deprived would be much more difficult for her.
It’s a short overview of some of the ways in which our Western views about the nature of sexuality have changed in the last couple of hundred years. There are lots of books about this kind of thing like Sex at Dawn. There are also lots of books about changes in human physiology and cultures like Sperm Wars, Dover’s Greek Homosexuality, etc.
The problem, though, is that people who are woefully ignorant of sex, nonetheless feel entitled to talk at great length about it as though they were experts. These people often can’t name the parts of the body involved in sex and don’t even understand basic bodily functions like reproduction (like those idiot christians who think that a woman who is raped can’t get pregnant, because their god would never go down into that tainted uterus to deliver a soul). Nevertheless, these ignorant people feel entitled to opine about the morality of sex.
Morality does not come from an imaginary sky-friend. Morality is about helping people live the best kinds of life open to them and this involves understanding human nature and the facts surrounding it. Unless someone understands the physiology of sex, the psychology of sex, the history of sex, and even the philosophical implications of sex, then they shouldn’t be trying to construct a system of sexual ethics. Yet, this is precisely what is going on. These…”experts” can’t even understand their own urges and bodies and yet, try to tell us how to live our lives. They can’t understand that sex has changed throughout the ages and think it has always been the same. Their ignorance leads them to have a particularly pernicious kind of myopia where they can’t see that their simple-minded views are not necessarily true.
The point I’m trying to get at is that ignorance, not knowing things, leads you to not see the broader picture as you often cannot see what you don’t understand. In sex, this is particularly problematic as people try to reason from the way things are right now to human nature and try to posit immutable laws on little to no evidence. This is just completely intolerable.
So, ward yourself against the myopia from ignorance by trying to learn as much as you can and challenging your beliefs and making sure you understand the reasons why you believe things. Especially with regards to sex. Just because things are a certain way in our culture right now does not mean they have always been this way or that this is the best way to live. You need to look at sex throughout time and different places and then decide what works best in your life.
In this episode of the newly relaunched Erosophia Podcast, Jason, William, and Joia talk about the limits of sex-positivity.
News
1. Genital Wart Decline Tracked to HPV Vaccine
2. Trying to Ban Abortion through “reasonable measures”
3. The App to Prevent Icelandic Incest
4. Pro-abstinence education is just christian hatred of sexuality
5. Gay man confirmed to 2nd highest Air Force Civilian position
Questions
Can scar tissue create extreme sexual sensitivity?
If you want to ask a question, contact us at Podcast@JasonStotts.com, on twitter via @ErosPod, on this page here on Erosophia, or via our Facebook page.
Tonight’s Topic: The Limits of Sex-Positivity
Sex positivity, while benevolent, goes astray by being too permissive and failing to have any real standards. The solution is to set a rational standard and apply it to ascertain whether any particular sex act or situation is moral or immoral. This standard has to be a person’s life and long-term happiness.
Subscribe to the Podcast
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Support the Podcast
You can support the show by making a donation via PayPal (see bar to the right) orAmazon Payment (or any other payment method you might want, just get in touch with us). You can also use Erosophia’s referral link to Amazon to buy things. You can sign up for Kasidie, the best lifestyle site on the web. Or you can tell your friends and spread the word about the podcast.
If you want to advertise on the Erosophia Podcast, please contact us at Jason@JasonStotts.com or on twitter via @ErosPod.
Essays referenced: On Polysexuality, An Essay on the Bounds of Passion and the Good Life: Alternative Sexualities and Ayn Rand’s Objectivism
Episode #6 - The Limits of Sex Positivity [ 44:16 | 20.66 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (120)
