Hacker News Reader

Comment by x220 | Hacker News Reader

Pornography is a symptom of the commodification of sex, much like legal prostitution, sugar-daddies, and even the transactional swiping hookup apps that dominate dating among lower age groups. It is the tendency of a capital-dominated culture to turn everything into a commodity that is bought and sold; sex is merely one element that this system has consumed. After the wide acceptance of the birth control pill, the trend has been for women to take the same career and life path as men. Women no longer need long term relationships for sex or material needs; sex in the age of the birth control pill is done on women's terms and negotiated for a price they accept, as long as that relationship does not interfere with maximum capitalist production.

It's possible that if sex were not a commodity, we would be happier and more mentally healthy.

View on HN

Sex was bought and sold long before capitalism, though.

And I don't even mean prostitution, although that one is obvious. But in traditional patriarchal societies, brides are often effectively bought and sold, and sex is a part of that package. The difference is whether the benefactor is the woman herself, or somebody else.

In a very cynical sense, in a traditional society, women are "capital" of a very special kind - they are the "means of production" of heirs. And heirs are necessary for the family line to accumulate other kinds of capital over time.

Agreed. And I think a large fraction of men (the ones who naturally suck at seducing women to begin with), if given the means to both reproduce and achieve sexual gratification WITHOUT women, would leap at the opportunity. Women recognize this, which is why they so heavily resist things like sex robots or even male contraception.

Jango Fett from Star Wars Episode 2 was an archetypal MGTOW and ahead of his time: cloning himself and investing all of his resources in transferring his accumulated life experience and knowledge to his "son"....no resource-sharing woman involved.

Personally I consider that a very dystopian potential future....

Women most certainly don't resist male contraception. On the contrary, women are usually the ones who have to keep reminding men to do it, or to use more reliable methods. For fairly obvious reasons: women are the ones who have to deal with far more serious consequences of unprotected sex.

And as for robots... consider the relative popularity of mechanical aids such as vibrators for women, and for men. I'd say that women have embraced sex robots a long time ago.

>>>Women most certainly don't resist male contraception. On the contrary, women are usually the ones who have to keep reminding men to do it, or to use more reliable methods.

I should have clarified, I wasn't referring to condoms but to pill-style oral contraceptives. Entirely my fault for the lack of specificity.[1][2]

>>>I'd say that women have embraced sex robots a long time ago.

Not as a replacement for THEMSELVES. [3][4][5]

[1]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1251868/Of-course...

[2]https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-male-pill-contracep...

[3]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6730555/Swedish-fem...

[4]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/25/ban-se...

[5]https://www.feministcurrent.com/2017/04/27/sex-robots-epitom...

I was hoping for some studies. This is a good example of "anecdotes are not data", and especially so that most of these are tabloid op-eds. It's a stretch to conclude something as broad as "women resist things like sex robots and male contraception" - such a claim strongly implies the majority, but all I'm seeing here is a few angry people, and sensationalist journalists happy to give them a platform.

From[1]: "For the second question, we found a marginal effect with men being more open to the idea of having sex robots (36 men in favor vs. 21 against) as a result of filling out the survey, while women being more against it (19 women in favor vs. 24 against)"

Or from[2]:"The only specific robot type with significant effects was sex robots: men (Mdn=3) reported them as being significantly more useful (women, Mdn=4), and men (Mdn=5) were also more willing to acquire a sex robot (women, Mdn=5)."

But both of these are user/owner-based perspectives on sex robots, rather than directly answering "How do you feel about competing with robots in the sexual marketplace?"

However, [3] points out that "Women compete by enhancing physical appearance and denigrating rivals’ reputations." [emphasis mine]. It stands to reason that women would continue to denigrate sexual competitors, even if those competitors are artificial constructs.

[1]https://hrilab.tufts.edu/publications/scheutzarnold16hri.pdf

[2]http://hci.cs.umanitoba.ca/assets/publication_files/beyond_p...

[3]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016748701...

In America we are seeing the acceleration of sex commodification to it's zenith.

What do you make of dowries, where the bride's family transfers wealth to the groom's family? Are they buying the sex of the groom? This would be consistent with what you are saying. Dowries (wealth from bride's family to groom's family) are much more common today and throughout history than a dower (the reverse wealth transfer).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com