Sex is interesting because, while private, it is often discussed. People (including myself) have a certain tendency to deduce what sex is like for everyone from what sex is like for ourselves.
Corollary 1 – If you’re a socially awkward and isolated, nerdy male loser in your twenties, you will be shocked when you accidentally learn that most of your peers are not still virgins, and that if they talk so much about sex, it’s not only due to complex social motives beyond your comprehension, but also because they actually have sex.
Corollary 2 – If, in addition, you’ve been raised with a mix of feminist ideas about equality and the default expectation that you won’t have sex till marriage—and even then, possibly only when you’re trying to have children—women will suddenly become very different creatures to you, far less relatable than they used to seem, when you learn about their rôle as gatekeepers to sex. It’ll take a while for you to come to terms with the unexpected fact that they most emphatically do not wish the kind of intimacy with you that you crave with most of them, and that failure to anticipate this makes you a sleazy criminal.
Corollary 3 – If you’ve grown up used to following rules society seems to enforce, that determine your behavior almost entirely, leaving no room for your desires to matter, you’ll have a hard time realizing other people do pursue their desires—often making up fancy, selectively applied rules as they go to rationalize them—and you’ll keep fruitlessly looking for the mysterious social script they seem to know so well and follow without fail. People will be offended by your expectations; after all, if you are a loser and expect them to be like you, you’re calling them losers.
Corollary 1 – If you’re a socially awkward and isolated, nerdy male loser in your twenties, you will be shocked when you accidentally learn that most of your peers are not still virgins, and that if they talk so much about sex, it’s not only due to complex social motives beyond your comprehension, but also because they actually have sex.
Corollary 2 – If, in addition, you’ve been raised with a mix of feminist ideas about equality and the default expectation that you won’t have sex till marriage—and even then, possibly only when you’re trying to have children—women will suddenly become very different creatures to you, far less relatable than they used to seem, when you learn about their rôle as gatekeepers to sex. It’ll take a while for you to come to terms with the unexpected fact that they most emphatically do not wish the kind of intimacy with you that you crave with most of them, and that failure to anticipate this makes you a sleazy criminal.
Corollary 3 – If you’ve grown up used to following rules society seems to enforce, that determine your behavior almost entirely, leaving no room for your desires to matter, you’ll have a hard time realizing other people do pursue their desires—often making up fancy, selectively applied rules as they go to rationalize them—and you’ll keep fruitlessly looking for the mysterious social script they seem to know so well and follow without fail. People will be offended by your expectations; after all, if you are a loser and expect them to be like you, you’re calling them losers.