Common View on Prostitution

[ShaLeah]

Why wouldn't the average Zalanthan not react badly to some random stranger walking up and propositioning them for sex?

"Who the Drov are you, and why should I even consider kanking you?!"

Because in a world where so little is nice and warm and fuzzy, a couple hours or days of fucking might seem a nice change of pace?

[God]

Humans are mammals. Of course they have instincts. Lazloth is the only person on here who I can tell actually understands anthropology.

Even if men and women have no difference in strength, the simple fact that women bear children, an ardous, time-consuming task, will make a significant difference in the two. I think I already wrote that with the death rate of Zalanthas, women need to bear A LOT of children for Zalanthas to have a self-sustaining population. After they bear the children, they have to raise them. That's what the average woman should be doing. Bearing and raising children, and depending upon a man to support her and her children, at least while she's pregnant. Women(and men, to a lesser extent) naturally gravitate to the best mate they can find, then try to keep him for the good of her child. The Alpha male, in ancient times, sometimes had scores of women. Enough of that tangent...

Jealousy probably isn't an instinct - it's a reflex, and it's also an emotion. I'm a protective and jealous man, I'll admit, and that certainly isn't culturally imposed. I couldn't stop it if I wanted to.

[Gorobei]

Humans do not have instincts

What do you think emotions are?

[ShaLeah]

Jealousy probably isn't an instinct - it's a reflex, and it's also an emotion. I'm a protective and jealous man, I'll admit, and that certainly isn't culturally imposed. I couldn't stop it if I wanted to.

I have often been described as hot blooded, passionate, fiery tempered, bitchy, temperamental and pretty much every other name in the book that can be used to describe anything of the sort.

When I was younger, especially in my teens and early twenties, I was a very jealous character. God help my mate if I caught his ass looking at someone else.  :evil:

Then a funny thing happened when I was about twenty six, twenty seven... I gained self-confidence.

I find that for me, feelings of jealousy were stemmed by in some way feeling insecure about the relationship which boiled down to:

I'm not good enough

I'm not sure if jealousy ever goes away, I still get a pang or two but not when my man looks at another woman with interest, I get them now when I can tell that another woman has -genuine- interest in my man, not that she just wants to kank him, but that she finds him as interesting/funny/charming/sexy/intelligent/etc as I do.
Those occassions are very rare and when they -do- happen I tell myself this:
If he didn't want to be with me, he wouldn't be here.
AND
If he wants to be with her, fuck him, I'll find another.

I don't agree, jealousy can be changed. At the very least controlled.


ShaLeah
-who had a boyfriend once who used to stand on the opposite side of the street to see how many men looked at her and then bitched at her like it was somehow her fault.
Now -that- is jealous. :roll:

[FiveDisgruntledMonkeysWit]

God wrote:

That's what the average woman should be doing. Bearing and raising children, and depending upon a man to support her and her children, at least while she's pregnant.

How would you like to sit around for RL years, your character unable to do their job because they keep getting pregnant? Honestly, this is a game, and it calls for some suspension of disbelief. What you say makes sense, I concede to that... For Zalanthas to have a stable population, people would need to fuck constantly and take care of all their offspring. However, I don't want to subject our already slim female player base to an endless cycle of mud-sex, gestation, birth, recovery and repeat. This is a -game-. With the purpose of having -fun-. No matter how bad you want Zalanthan women to be good and nurse all the little kiddies running around, it's just not going to happen. Why would you want to EMOTE breast-feeding your seventeeth kid when there are mekillots to slay, nobles to assassinate, and businesses to take over?

[Angela Christine]

There are a range of alternatives between life-long monogomy and unbridled promiscuity with no long-term relationships at all.  We don't have a lot of personal experience with those kinds of relationships, so you have to use your imagination, read a lot of science fiction/fantasy, or look at some of the "alternative lifestyles" people are currently experimenting with.

A good start is to run a search on "polyamory" and "polyfidelity".  Here's a short excerpt from a poly site http://www.sexuality.org/l/polyamor/polart2.html that could work well on Zalanthas:

Polyfidelity offers a number of obvious advantages over more traditional family and intimacy styles. It caters to the desires of those who like sexual variety, yet allows this to occur in the context of lasting,deep, meaningful relationships. This blend of spice and stability is very refreshing to people who, in other situations, have had to forfeit a stable home life in order to experience variety, or vice versa. The problem of having unrealistic expectations of what one partner can provide that often occurs in two-adult families is solved; no one individual needs to be all things to anyone else. For single parents,or parents in general, a polyfidelitous household is a marvellous environment in which to raise children.  The burden of responsibility and care that would otherwise fall on one or two individuals is spread out throughout the group, which allows the adults to be involved in many activities besides childcare, and
gives the children a healthy assortment of good role models; adults with whom to build caring, trusting relationships.

'The intimacy of women or men sharing the same sexual partners and living space is unique to
polyfidelity, and delightful'

Then there are the benefits of same sex camaraderie in the privacy of one's own home. The intimacy
of women or men sharing the same sexual partners and living space is unique to polyfidelity, and
delightful. The whole problem of jealousy is much more easily solved in this context than in others,
because the pleasure and closeness one observes in the relationship of any two of her/his partners in no
way threatens her/his own relationship with each of them. In fact, the opposite is true: the better the relationships are between all family members, the more secure the group is as a whole, and the stronger each individual's relations with any of her/his partners. In an age where social fragmentation and
loneliness have reached epidemic proportions, polyfidelity offers its adherents a fantastic, built-in social and psychological support system, in an atmosphere conducive to individual growth and change. The support system is economic too, as the cost of living for many adults sharing space and other resources cooperatively is much lower than the cost of living for people in one or two-adult households.

It all probably sounds more akward then it is.  

Another option is fixed-term relationships, where the term is something other than "until death do us part."

For example, you might agree on a 5 year "marriage".  Durring that time you would live together, share expenses and responsibilities, and attempt to have 2 children.  At the end of the term both children should be at least toddlers, you each take one child and go on your merry way.  You have the option to renew if you want to, but there is no obligation to attempt to stay bound together forever.  You would need to have some contingency clauses.  You might specify that if pregnancy does not occur within the first year the marriage is aborted, because obviously you are not reproductively compatable and the purpose was reproduction.  You would also need to agree what happens if at the end of the 5 year term there is only 1 living child, or if there are 3 or more.  If one of the parties dies after the conclusion of the contract, does the surviving partner have any rights/responsiblilites for the child that partner was raising, or does the child "belong" to that partner's family.

It sounds like a lot to figure out, and terribly unromantic, but that level of complexity is common in marriage agreements.  In cultures using doweries and/or bride price you have to agree who gets what when, and what happens if the marriage is not completed, consumated or fruitful.  Western culture tries really hard to make marriage all about love, lust and romance, but most cultures are more pragmatic.  Marriage is something that will affect your well-being and the well-being of your offspring for the rest of your lives.  When something is that important you can't make your decision based solely on emotions and hormones, because everybody -knows- that emotions and hormones are unreliable.  How selfish or crazy would you have to be to gamble your children's future on something so unreliable?  :twisted:

Angela Christine

[Malifaxis]

Because in a world where so little is nice and warm and fuzzy, a couple hours or days of fucking might seem a nice change of pace?

Lets not forget the 'getting paid for it' part.  That could also significantly increase the enjoyment in an impovrished locale.

Humans do not have instincts.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!  Wrong answer.  Sorry.

My proof?  Instinct to reproduce.  You take two people of opposite sex, from birth, put them in a sealed environment until they are hormonal.  Put them in the same room, all nekkid, and one will mount the other.  No one has to show you where Mr. Willy takes a swim, you just know.

At least, that's how I see it.

On the concept of fantasies being fulfilled by professional *ahem* 'providers'... there are many things that women will do on Earth for money in a 'carreer' such as the one we are speaking of.  On Earth, money is much more readily available than on Zalanthas, which therefor increases the willingness to do absolutely cracked out things to people.

Brow furrowed in thought as phantasmal obsidian coins whirl about her head in a frenzied manner, the high class ho says, in sirihish;
  "Let me get this straight, you want me to dress up like a mekillot and haul your chariot across town.  Then you want me to let you 'ride' me in to the Bard's Barrel while I sing 'my kank peed on a dwarf' at the top of my lungs?  Well, Lord Templar, that'll cost you a bit extra."

You think:  This is gonna suck, but I'm gonna be SOOOOOOO rich!

[X-D]

My proof? Instinct to reproduce. You take two people of opposite sex, from birth, put them in a sealed environment until they are hormonal. Put them in the same room, all nekkid, and one will mount the other. No one has to show you where Mr. Willy takes a swim, you just know.

Better find where somebody has done that experiment, cause at this moment, everything I can find says your wrong there, humans are probly the only animal in the world that has to be taught the mechanics of copulation.

99% of what most people think are instinct are learned responses.
The rest are at best reflex.

You hear talk now and again of pheromone research in humans and often the wording will be used "the instinctual response to" But in every case this is not an instinct, it is nothing more then a physio-chemical reaction to another chemical, barely even a reflex.

Instinct to self preservation, Heh, to many suicides for that to be true, again, at best you get a reflex action in times of danger, the most common being to freeze, but not everyone, which means, again, reflex at best because fear is a an emotion the body reacts to but there is no instruction beyond that other then what you learn.

Human beings cannot even walk instinctualy, they have to learn/be taught, unlike any other walking animal.

Of course, my biggest arguement is mostly how people define instinct, some are simply more liberal then others :wink:

instinct

2. (Zo["o]l.) Specif., the natural, unreasoning, impulse by which an animal is guided to the performance of any action, without of improvement in the method.

The resemblance between what originally was a habit, and an instinct becomes so close as not to be distinguished. --Darwin.

reflex

Something, such as light or heat, that is reflected.
An image produced by reflection.
A copy or reproduction.
Physiology. An involuntary response to a stimulus.
Psychology. An unlearned or instinctive response to a stimulus.
Linguistics. A form or feature that reflects or represents an earlier, often reconstructed, form or feature having undergone phonetic or other change.

Now, those two are just from the unabridged, notice the reflex definition uses the word instinctive, but it is using that word in the form that is the synonym for automatic.
But if you move along to the medical dictionary, which I do not think is written for the general layperson.

reflex

\Re"flex\ (r?"fl?ks), a. [L. reflexus, p. p. of reflectere: cf. F. r['e]flexe. See Reflect.] 1. Directed back; attended by reflection; retroactive; introspective.

The reflex act of the soul, or the turning of the intellectual eye inward upon its own actions. --Sir M. Hale.

2. Produced in reaction, in resistance, or in return.

3. (Physiol.) Of, pertaining to, or produced by, stimulus or excitation without the necessary intervention of consciousness.

Reflex action (Physiol.), any action performed involuntarily in consequence of an impulse or impression transmitted along afferent nerves to a nerve center, from which it is reflected to an efferent nerve, and so calls into action certain muscles, organs, or cells.

reflex

adj : (physiology) without volition or conscious control; "the automatic shrinking of the pupils of the eye in strong light"; "a reflex knee jerk"; "sneezing is reflexive" [syn: automatic, reflex(a), reflexive] n : an automatic reaction [syn: physiological reaction]

Notice the synonyms.

Anyway, guess I'm just more or a purest in my definitions:)

Anyway, come up with something a bit more complex or something that is internaly generated rather then as a simple knee-jerk or chemical reaction to an outside stimuli and maybe I'll concede humans might have instincts

[Malifaxis]

Better find where somebody has done that experiment, cause at this moment, everything I can find says your wrong there, humans are probly the only animal in the world that has to be taught the mechanics of copulation.

*boggle*  Seriously?  I never had to learn the mechanics... which... I guess means I'm an aberration.  Either that or a throw back.

I think the first line of your response is all the justification I need to become a Mad Scientist.

Malifaxis
-Who is rubbing his hands together at the prospect of winning this arguement in 13-15 years.

[DrunkenSalarr]

I think the first line of your response is all the justification I need to become a Mad Scientist.

Malifaxis
-Who is rubbing his hands together at the prospect of winning this arguement in 13-15 years.

There are pleanty of similar experiments I've always wanted to do on humans, and I only have one thing to say: stupid laws and medical ethics.

Drunken Salarr, who wonders if this happens to all the long posts that he typically stops reading.

[X-D]

Grin

There are pleanty of similar experiments I've always wanted to do on humans, and I only have one thing to say: stupid laws and medical ethics.

yup, sad ain't it.

boggle* Seriously? I never had to learn the mechanics... which... I guess means I'm an aberration. Either that or a throw back.

Yes, you did learn it, but in basicly the same manner you learned a lot of other things.

Take for instance, many people think that it is instinctual to not be a cannibal simply because nobody ever 'taught' them to not be one, Sure, nobody ever said "Now Malifaxis, don't eat your little playmates."
No, over the years you noticed things, weather you thought of them or not, like, nobody else you knew was eating people, comments from people around you like when somebody burns themself on a really hot surface "Man, I hate the smell of burnt human flesh, don't you?"
Many things some as simple as the look on somebodies face if you say the word cannibal.

And that is something that is not mentioned often, sex on the other hand you have been bombarded with your whole life, if by the time you are old enough to actually start thinking about doing it yourself you don't have at least some idea on what is going on with the basic machanics then you may have been raised in a box.

And to take anothers example, if a male and a female were raised with 0 human contact then at say age 15 were stuck in a room together naked, they would both be petrified and even after that wears off sex would probly never happen, specialy since one would not know what the other was and I doubt very much if either would even think they are the same species.

My mom was raised on a farm, she learned how animals reproduced very early, but being that she was raised in the 50's on a farm by strict jesuits with no tv (not that it would have mattered at the time) My mother on her wedding night night when my father explained what was next stated to him "NO! Thats how baby cows and pigs are made, not people!"

Needless to say, my conception was not till the next night.

[Malifaxis]

Sure, nobody ever said "Now Malifaxis, don't eat your little playmates."

Uhh... I hate to say it, but... um... they did say that.  I still have quite the intensive oral fetish, but at least I don't bite quite that hard anymore.

Malifaxis
-Who is now more adamant than ever about raising people in boxes, and is doing research on which countries have these stupid ethical medical laws.

[2 Lazy 2 Login ShaL]

Uhh... I hate to say it, but... um... they did say that.  I still have quite the intensive oral fetish, but at least I don't bite quite that hard anymore.

Heh.

ShaLeah
-who can just imagine some of the thoughts this statement has caused.

[Gorobei]

X-D:
You walk into a room, and that guy that you hate is eating your oh-so-tasty lunch.  You get the sudden urge to do something painful to him.

How do you explain that?

[X-D]

Explain what? You already said you hated him him before you caught him eating your lunch and likly the society you live in has laws/morals and such dealing with theft and being wronged in some way, these normaly also carry a punishment of some sort for the offender, So, you have already learned that somebody doing something bad to somebody else when it is unwarrented deserves to be punished or have something bad happen to them, to me, it is logical to want to be the one dishing it out.

Would your thoughts/urges/feeling have been the same if it had been your mom?


Hey, I just remembered what the thread topic was :wink:  personaly, I think we need more NPC prostitutes in game and in nicer areas, most of them that I see are in the poor areas, you would think there would be at least a few in each of the taverns, specialy the ones that have strip shows and such, always wondered why Kurac or even the guild does not handle that in each of the cities (on the guild, maybe they do..shrug) But makes real sense for Kurac, spice gambling, booze and whores, what a perfect combo.

[spawnloser]

To support Malifaxis, people do have instincts, as any psychology student should be able to tell you...psychological needs, we will call them.  These are to eat, to sleep, to have shelter and to breed.  These are instincts...to do them well, one needs to learn how, but the desire to have/do them is not a learned behaviour.

As far as jealousy goes, it is a feeling of insecurity, as has been mentioned.  When one has a feeling that they are not as good (in whatever way) as some other person, they become scared that they will lose the security that they have, in the form of the relationship that they have.  This can come from the other member of the relationship taking a gander at someone else or the someone else taking a gander.

Back to trust, I asked Cuusardo, and she said that trust issue she was mentioning is that a prostitute is a professional and one can trust a professional to do a good job.  She wasn't talking about the western concept of needing an element of trust in someone to sleep with them...however, I will mention that you do need some amount of trust to sleep with someone by putting one's self in such an unprotected situation.  If there is no trust, things start to break down...Lord Gaddagetsum will hire a prostitute to do him back at his place, where she hasn't hidden anything...the prostitute will make sure that someone knows where she's gone and make sure that the Lord knows she did this so that he would, wishing to avoid any scandal, not harm her...etc.

Hell, continuing on about trust...do you really think anyone in Zalanthas SHOULD trust anyone???  I played a trusting character...wanna know what happened to her?  She was killed by her best friend.  One of the better roleplaying experiences I've been through on this mud...but that's what trust gets you, is stabbed...repeatedly.

Heheh...now I'm starting to get off track.  You should have stopped reading earlier than now.

SpawN, who is also known as 'He-that-has-taken-enough-psych-courses-to-be-over-half-way-towards-a-major'

[Barzalene]

I don't see how they differ significantly from other merchants.

[X-D]

Spawnloser wrote:

people do have instincts, as any psychology student should be able to tell you...psychological needs, we will call them. These are to eat, to sleep, to have shelter and to breed. These are instincts

Come now spawn old chap, two of the things you named are not instinct or reflex, they are physical needs,  not doing either one of them for too long will cause your body to stop functioning, the need to have fuel and replacement building materials is a set of signals sent to the brain telling it the tank is low  your mind interprets this as a need to eat, but except for suckling, you were taught to eat a long time ago, swallowing is a reflex.

Sleep is also something that without it, eventually you will die, one of the main reasons that you sleep is to replenish chemicals used to transmit nerve impulses and the chemicals in the photoreceptor cells in your eyes along with some repairs to cells and growth and replacement.

Shelter? come now.

Urge to breed, Hard to say that is an inborn instinct when you consider how many people simply do not have it, I know right now over 30 people who are over 40 and have never had children nor have they wanted to have children, I myself never felt any desire to breed and impregnated my daughters mom only because she wanted a child, when my daughter was 1 year old I took the steps to make sure I'd have no more, I was 24 at the time, My mother never had a desire to procreate, it was just expected of her.


And I bet even your professer of psych would admit that psychology is far more an art then a science.

[God]

Humans instinctively learn.

[Carnage]

If this is going to derail into a debate over instincts/reflexes, mind doing it in the OOC forum?

[Lazloth]

You prompted this, buddy.

[spawnloser]

Sorry, Carnage, but this derailed a LONG time ago...

To as quickly possible answer what X-D asked, however, the physical needs that were mentioned may be physical needs, but the psyche still seeks out any of these things prior to the body actually needing these things.  Instincts and reflexes are two seperate things, however...reflexes are the autonomic nervous system kicking in...instincts are hardwired psychological needs.  Like the need to procreate...since this is something that is interpreted on the instinctual level rather than the conscious level to have children, it should be labelled as the need to copulate (which in aulden times usually produced children).  Personally, my philosophical and socio-political beliefs prevent me from actually procreating either, but damn if I don't want to copulate.  The thing that needs to be understood here is that you have to understand some psychological precepts on an animal level rather than cognitive.

[Angela Christine]

I don't see how they differ significantly from other merchants.

Yeah, I see them as socially equivilent to mercenaries.  They both take money in return for letting others use their bodies for a set period of time.  Both have no loyalty, at least no loyalty beyond block of time your coin has bought.  Some are more expensive, skilled and reliable than others (a clean, skilled whore is like a merc from an established and skilled mercenary company, perhaps even an especially skilled and sought after specialist).  A few are cheap but almost useless, and little more than thugs that are trying to get you alone so they can rob or kill you ('rinth whores, drunkard untrained sellswords).

AC

[CindyLou]

To add to AC's post (since I agree with it):

However your character thinks of a mercenary, would be similar to what they'd think of a prostitute, for similar reasons.

So if your character thinks mercs are low-lifes, and equate the prostitute's place in social status with that of a merc, then you'd probably see the prostitute as a low-life as well.  If your status is lower than that of a merc and view them as people to be admired, then you'd probably admire the prostitute.

So again, I reiterate - it depends on two things: the type of prostitute you're talking about, and your own character's "place" in society compared with the prostitute's place in society.

[ShaLeah]

To bring this to a close, can everyone agree that prostitution is very much alive on Zalanthas and how you will be treated will be entirely dependant on what type of whore you are?

Just for shits and giggles, it would be nice if we could all compromise. Heh.


ShaLeah
-who had a rinthy whore who didn't live long enough to get a client.