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Comment by OtterCoder | Hacker News Reader

And you are sufficiently qualified? And willing to insist that sex work is essential to human happiness?

Where did I say, or even imply anything about sex work? Extramarital prevalence alone is in stark contrast with your assertions.

I'd like to see a citation for the prevalence of adultery. Studies I've seen cite 20% of married men have committed at least one act of infidelity, and that the current percentage is almost twice what it was in the seventies. That seems to me like the vast majority of couples get along just fine in a monogamous relationship, and that culture has more to do with infidelity than primal need.

The culture of enforced monogamy also involved closeted gay people getting married to people they had no sexual relationship with and hiding their real relationships, rampant alcoholism and domestic violence, many depressed and anxious people stuck in relationships they were unhappy in but felt social pressure not to leave, women with out-of-wedlock children and people who (for any number of reasons) never wanted to get married being ostracized by their communities, women systematically excluded from many careers and positions of social/political power, trusted institutions like the Catholic church covering up large-scale sexual abuse of children, etc. etc.

Cherrypicking a single summary statistic gives a far too rosy impression of past sexual/family culture. Ultimately if you go back far enough the original purpose of sexual mores related to marriage were primarily about clarifying and maintaining patriarchal land inheritance and designating women and children as chattel of the male head of household.

If I'm cherry-picking, you're strictly appealing to emotion. Are you suggesting that the gay population, which is between 2-6% of Americans, plenty of whom are also monogamous (75% of male homosexuals, by recent estimates), are a major factor in a 10% uptick in infidelity in the general population?

Are you possibly suggesting that abuse never gets inflicted on prostitutes, and that reducing them to human chattel, as their bodies are bought and sold, has improved their lot?

You’re missing my point, which is that there have been radical cultural shifts in the past 50 years which have completely transformed expectations about sex, relationships, family life, careers, etc.

The old pattern might have had less infidelity (though I wouldn’t be surprised if available data about past prevalence of infidelity is inaccurate and unreliable), but it also had many other severe social problems, some of which have improved substantially between 1970 and today.

A culture (and the laws, mores, economic relationships, etc. which enforce it) isn’t a simple system that you can poke in a particular way and get a clear and simple result out.

A behaviour does not need to be exhibited by the majority to be normal, or accepted. Please don't get into a habit of speaking on behalf of humanity when expressing a personal viewpoint. Is that too much to ask?

Yes, yes it is too much to ask.

I won't judge a body for being a brony, or a never-nude, or a benign cultist, or a thousand other things. I don't expect normalcy from anyone.

That said, there are unqualified evils in the world. Things and acts that slowly crush and rend human lives, making the world a darker place, more filled with despair, jealousy, and hatred. Slavery, including debt slavery, is one. The sex trade, the topic at hand, is another.

To not speak out against evils of that scale and consequence is to side with them.

Changing topics back to your quibble about infidelity: it's also evil, if on a more personal scale. Where there are vows of that weight and import, abandoning them unilaterally is ruinous to yourself, your family, those who know you, and many that you will never know or meet. It may not be a matter for the law, but it's not a silly little quirk to smile and wink at.

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