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Question #1: Does it matter when someone has sex for the first time? I'm really unsure about the answer for a few reasons: 1. Apparently after someone has had about 3 sexual partners, their chances of getting divorced and just being a bad parent in general begin to increase. (According to stef in a video which I can't find) 2. If this first point is true, then does it matter if you have random sex or sex with a friend? Shouldn't someone have sex with someone they love? If you reach the 3rd person and you're no longer together, then you're screwing yourself over (statistically speaking). 3. Are virgins generally more motivated in life than non-virgins? If so, then that energy could be used for making great(er) things happen in one's life. If this is the case, then shouldn't someone stay a virgin for a long time? 4. Is it true that everyone remembers their first time? If so, then how do would one know whether or not their partner will go back to that person for sex later? How can you be truly dedicated to someone if you enjoy remembering sex you had with other people? Question #2: Does it matter how many people someone has had sex with? This is in regard to finding a suitable woman to possibly pro-create with in the future. Can someone really change their ways and become loyal & committed to one person for the rest of their life if they've spent most of their adulthood pursuing lots of f***buddies? I'll add some more questions later on once these 2 fundamentals have been sorted.

This is a question that I've long sought an answer to but could never pin down. It's a topic I've only rarely heard discussed on the show, the most recent being the interview with Gary Wilson who wrote Your Brain On Porn (highly recommended). Basically, is pornography of any kind morally wrong to consume? If so, what is the argument that pins it to the wall so we can help perpetrators see their immorality? If not, should we treat it as an addictive behavior/substance? Like booze or opiates? Or should we be hands off in addressing it? I personally see nothing morally wrong with a guy in his room consuming weird fetish pornography, just like a guy smoking on his balcony. He isn't committing rape, theft, assault or murder, so his actions don't violate UPB. It's a different case however if he's supporting (or funding) pornography in which UPB is being violated, the content of that example I'm sure you can fill in yourselves. At the same time, I can't help but get this feeling or voice in the back of my head that tells me something is wrong. That this has an air of destructiveness that can have devastating effects on a person's life. It goes deeper than a nicotine addiction does, because sexuality is something so personal and intimate. This feels like a totally different beast that I can't get good philosophical footing on. Maybe I'm over-thinking it and if twenty-year-olds wanna watch hentai then there's nothing wrong with that, but something feels off. As for Stef's views on this, I've extracted little tid-bits from shows, one about sexual fetishism where he said sexual fetishism needs to be corrected, and in the same show he questioned the listener on his openness about his fetish with his mother. He said "How do you talk about this stuff with your mom? 'I like it this way with whip cream and a dinosaur toy-' this is just something I never wanna hear from my children." And he didn't say it in an angry or condemning way, but in a joking sort of "that's private and should stay private". The show is titled The Origins Of Sexual Fetishism for those interested. In conclusion, here's my best "argument" against the consumption of pornography that I'm unsure of: Why would you need porn to be aroused if you're in a relationship? What is it about your significant other that is lacking in the sexual department? Shouldn't your lover be the only source of arousal in your life? Porn is wrong to consume because you pledge your sexual arousal to your partner, and them to you, so using porn is like going to a prostitute or cheating. All done for sexual needs at the neglect of your partner. So what are your guys's opinions on this? Link me a previous thread if it's been talked about before.

Hi everyone. Earlier this year, Stef had a female caller on the call-in show (I'm sorry, I don't remember the exact date of the show) she told him that when she was in her early to mid teens, her older friends got her drunk and then had sex right in front of her. If I remember correctly, Stef told her that it means she had been a victim of sexual abuse. Now when I heard this, I was really shocked. You see... until I was 15, me, my parents and my sister had shared one bedroom. It's not that the apartement had only 1 bedroom, but my parents wanted the other room to be a living room. And I remember ... I must have been 8 or 9 years old, one time in the middle of the night, I got woken up by the sounds of ... my parents having sex. I opened my eyes and all I saw were parts of two human bodies sticking from under the blanket, moving and shaking. I heard everything. It was all so loud. In that moment I felt probably the most frightened in my entire life. I turned my head towards the wall, closed my eyes and so badly wanted the whole thing to stop. I was so scared and I couldn't make a sound. I pretended to be sleeping through the whole thing and I hoped they wouldn't find out I was awake.... it felt so powerless... Jesus christ I have tears in my eyes... This was the first time that I remember, but this situation when I would wake up in the middle of the night by the sounds of them ... had been happening quite frequently until I was 15 when they decided that maybe it's time to turn the living room into another bedroom. It never occured to me to put this in the sexual abuse cathegory. But even before I even started listening to Freedomain Radio I knew I would never forgive them for the fear I felt as a child because of what they did. But using the term sexual abuse just seemed like too much. As a kid I remember thinking it was probably normal and that it surely must be happening to all the other kids... Probably my Stockholm Syndrome. I did some Googling about what effects on children may it have to have sex in front of them, mostly because I wanted to find out if it really does fall into the sexual abuse cathegory. It turns out it really does. So if I understand it correctly, I had no idea for years that I was repeatedly sexually abused. Or pherhaps I was aware the whole time but learned how to supress it. I don't know. I'm so confused. Am I overreacting? What do I do about this? Do I just come up to my parents and say "Mom, dad I want you to know you are complete monsters." ?

The discussion below arose out of an article I was referred to by an acquaintance of mine, a student of political science, on how the workplace is a greater source of coercion than the state. http://crookedtimber.org/2012/07/01/let-it-bleed-libertarianism-and-the-workplace/ I responded with various commentaries on the points made by the article. One particular comment was opposed quite strongly. My comment: "Where an employee can be fired to the disadvantage of the employee, an employee can also quit to the disadvantage of the employer. It works both ways. The reality of the situation is that the reason the employer has the power in the situations mentioned in this article is that there is a surplus of labour rather than a shortage. Because the employer is able to replace the employee fairly easily. If there was a labour shortage (such as the trade shortage that happened when all the plumbers and electricians headed up to the mines) or the job was for a more skilled position where the number of people with those skills was fairly limited, then the situation would be reversed, the power would be in the employees hands, and they would be free to say all the things the author quotes above." His response: "If I quit, my boss will hire someone else to do my job. They hire people all the time, it's easy. It'll be a minor inconvenience for them at worst. I, on the other hand, need to pay rent every week or I will be kicked out of my flat. I need to buy food. I have all sorts of expenses that must be paid for. If I lose my job, either by quitting or getting fired, it's a potentially life-ruining problem. And I'm a young, healthy single guy with qualifications. If I had kids or a health problem (or god forbid, kids with a health problem), I would be in serious trouble. If I was living in libertarian land with no unemployment benefits or equivalent, I need to get a new job that pays just as well as the old one, or I and my children might well end up homeless. And what if nobody is hiring? I need to keep this job. I need it really badly. Unless a particular employee has an incredibly rare and special skill, losing them is almost never as big a deal for the employer as it is for the employee. For many jobs, particularly the sort of unskilled jobs that marginal people (non-white, single parent, few qualifications etc.) work, it's potentially life-ruining for the employee but no issue at all for the employer. That power disparity means that the boss can often do whatever he likes (it is mostly he). There are a lot of examples of this. Sexual abuse is very common in garment factories located in developing countries, for example. The workers there are basically interchangeable, mostly women, and the bosses take advantage of them all the time. What are you going to do? Quit? You need this job. So you bend over for the boss. I don't know if you think this sort of thing is okay, or you didn't think it through, or you think I'm making it up, or you consider it an acceptable price in order to live in a society without taxes or police (except for the for-profit police who will patrol the gated communities of the rich, beating up any poor people who try to sneak in)." How do I adequately rebutt this comment, specifically the part about sexual abuse, from an an-cap perspective? I don't find it okay that this happens. My main thoughts were to focus on why the situation arises in the first place (that the state induces a situation where these women in third world developing countries are uneducated, stopped from forming labour associations etc.) Then follow with how a free-market anarchic situation would reduce or prevent the power disparity. Finally I also planned to outline just how an employer is affected by an employee quitting because people don't always think about these things, having been brought up all their life being told that employers are evil and need to be reigned in by the state.