If I am dating you, and I (explicitly or implicitly) forbid you to have sex with anyone else, then I am assuming ownership of your sexuality, by telling you what you can and cannot do with it.
(I don’t want to speak for eridu and jason, but this is how I interpreted the phrase in the OP.)
I believe that your interpretation of the phrase as it was used is correct, but the more I think about it, the more this is just giving an ugly name to a practice that may or may not be ugly. Any of the following could also be called “assuming ownership of another’s sexuality” if you felt like calling it that:
“I’m aware that you want to go ahead and risk it regardless of what the doctor said, but I’m worried about hurting you and I want to wait another week.”
“While we are in a relationship, don’t have sex with HIV-positive secondary partners, especially not without a condom.”
“Since you’re into it, I forbid you to have an orgasm for the next week. And I’m going to enforce it with this device.”
“Since you’re into doing whatever I say whether it’s your cup of tea or not...” (as above)
“While we are in a relationship, don’t have sex with anyone who isn’t aware of that fact, because it’s dishonest.”
“Because condoms+spermicide are the only form of reversible birth control I can personally take responsibility for and they’re not very reliable, and I don’t want to knock you up, please use another form of birth control too.”
“I am personally unable to tolerate $person and ask that while we are in a relationship, you don’t have sex with $person.”
“I know that you’re an exhibitionist, but can you avoid doing that while I’m in the room? It’s not my thing—and yes, I’d object to being sexiled, I live here.”
And none of the above are incompatible with polyamory. So I don’t think the actual problem Luke has with monogamy is related to “assuming ownership of another’s sexuality”. It might be more along the lines of “assuming responsibility for another’s sexuality” or “presuming participatory status in another’s non-solo sexuality”, but I’m not sure.
(I’m not sure where to put this but am saddened that more people don’t mention it:) Monogamy (monoamory?) is also just a lot more aesthetic in certain ways, at least for me and probably many others. There’s the rich history and culture associated with monogamy. There’s more opportunity to notice small details about the other person. It’s often less dramatic, or when it is dramatic it’s dramatic in aesthetic interesting ways instead of ugly awkward ways. For example, there’s the opportunity for implicit mutual agreements to “cheat” and the drama as those agreements are made, are used as implicit threats of blackmail, are made explicit as if just noticed for the first time but both know that’s silly. That’s a stupid way for things to go downhill but it has certain subtleties to it at least. Monogamy has a neat simplicity. It’s generally more sustainable if so desired, and more easily broken up too.
Okay, I shall give an overly melodramatic personal answer, and perhaps it will reflect the preferences of others and perhaps not. But my real answer is really quite specific, I think, even if I would have other reasons if this one didn’t dominate:
There is a certain type of perfection that is hinted at by some of my closed-eye visuals, for example when my mind is altered, that is more of a feeling than anything. The image that is most central to this feeling is a brief image of a modern apartment, elegantly furnished, smallish but not cramped, over 30 stories above ground level overlooking a nice part of some big city. It’s night time, and the apartment is in shadows, and no one is home.
But I can feel that there’s a couple that lives there, and I feel the subtle elegance of that kind of life. It’s like… they’re young, rich, well-dressed but not showy, well-cultured but not show-offs. They’re at peace, especially with each other, though they spend most of their time apart. They radiate a certain gentleness and a certain elegance, but it’s subtle and you’d only really be able to tell if you looked, but if you looked it’d be obvious. They have a single luxury car, an expensive guitar, an expensive DSLR, expensive furniture and a refrigerator filled with quality food, but they don’t have many possessions nor any real responsibilities. They vacation often. Neither has many friends, and their friends don’t much overlap, but the friends they have are close, and varied in skills and interests. A photographer, a mathematician, a monk, a business executive; though by no means are their friends one-dimensional. The couple lead a life that could scarcely be simpler, and yet with so many hints of richness, a certain kind of complexity that springs from the recursion of mutual understanding that is only tractable when everything is elegant. But really those are all just details that are filled in by the emotional tone of the image of that apartment, masked in shadows with nobody home.
It’s really a lot less melodramatic than I’m making it sound, but… I know a girl who I can easily delude myself into thinking could have lived a life like that with a counterfactual version of me who didn’t have to keep the stars from burning down—didn’t have to save her. But that is samsara.
I’m a very aesthetically oriented person, and a happily married one, but this conflation of aesthetics with the happiness of a relationship feels very strange to me. Have you tried making things suit you aesthetically and found that it really makes you happy, or is this all theory?
But even if those hidden rules could be systematically mined, I’m not sure I’d wish upon anyone the curse of getting what one wishes.
Eliot:
Either you had no purpose Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured And is altered in fulfilment.
and of course
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment Of all that you have done, and been; the shame Of motives late revealed, and the awareness Of things ill done and done to others’ harm Which once you took for exercise of virtue. Then fools’ approval stings, and honour stains.
I read about a rather large number of dystopias, weirdtopias with strongly dystopic aspects, and cultures with awful practices, and never before have I wanted to run away from a lifestyle this badly. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
It could well be that I’m still missing something, but that sounds like it fails on at least number 2 of Eliezer’s laws of fun.
We’ve reached the point in the conversation where I go “okay” and politely depart rather than telling someone what they should or shouldn’t want, though.
It’s very possible that I (naively introspectively) value “fun” a lot less than others do. As a human, I care a lot more about (the aesthetics of) perfection, probably because I’m so disturbed that so few others seem to care about it like I do and thus see “caring about (the aesthetics of) perfection” as my comparative advantage. As a transhuman or a Buddha, /shrugs.
More the former, though I don’t think that it’s difficult-to-understand in the usual sense—my impression is that it’s distinctly more subjective than that.
I understand that some people find monogamy aesthetically pleasing, and can write that off as personal preference and ignore it in general. You seemed to be trying to give a better model than that, but none of your examples really hit the mark, there. (Is the bit about cheating supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing?) I’m actually somewhat inclined to argue the ‘noticing details’ point, even—that’s mostly a matter of having the opportunity to observe a person in a variety of situations, in my experience, and it seems to me that adding an extra spouse or two would help with that, not hinder it.
Babyeating is also just a lot more aesthetic in certain ways, at least for me and probably many others. There’s the rich history and culture associated with babyeating.
How is this related to preferences or aesthetics concerning relationship styles?
(If you want to argue that monogamy is some value that I hold because I haven’t reflected upon it enough or thought things through from first principles and am instead supporting the legacy system out of status quo bias or Stockholm syndrome, as is really the only non-obvious argument to make, then you’ll have to go about it a lot more directly. If you’re saying that monogamy is reliably painful for at least one party where polyamory counterfactually would have eased that pain then you would need to substantiate that claim with evidence. If you’re not trying to say that then what are you trying to say, besides “My experience and introspection tell me that I don’t seem to share your values!”?)
You are reciting culturally-inherited cached thoughts about monogamy that seem as alien to me as babyeating is to humans. Your statements don’t have much information associated with them, but are just cheers for monogamy.
Ah, but that isn’t particularly true in the way you’re thinking it is—why be so uncharitable? I wouldn’t assume that your aversion to monagamy is the result of culturally-inherited cached cheers; it’s not socially polite or epistemicly hygienic. Anyway. I did indeed get many of my aesthetics from my culture, but insofar as you’re implying that I have not carefully reflected upon those aesthetics, you are mistaken. (Like many folk here I am significantly more reflective than your average person, and reflective on my process of reflection, and so on, because I mean what else do I have to do all day?) I agree that my statements don’t have much information to them, but I don’t really see them as “cheers” for monogamy—more like “things that I notice I like about monogamy relative to polygamy”. I do have some personal experience on the matter, I’m not simply armchair theorizing or extrapolating from books. It is clear that I should have added a sentence to that effect, or a clause saying “in my experience” to the relevant sentences.
Babyeating is also just a lot more aesthetic in certain ways, at least for me and probably many others. There’s the rich history and culture associated with babyeating.
If I believed you (I don’t) then I would point out that this should not lead you to weaken your estimation of Will’s point.
Will made very few points, and instead, cheered for monogamy. I intended to point this out by replacing the thing being cheered for, monogamy, with a different thing in the LessWrong zeitgeist, babyeating.
Non-Babyeating is also just a lot more aesthetic in certain ways, at least for me and probably many others. There’s the rich history and culture associated with non-babyeating.
I think you are misusing the example. The lesson of three worlds collide wasn’t that Babyeaters should obviously stop eating babies, it was that different beings have different and potentially mutually incompatible values. Why in the world would Baby-eaters want or work towards changing away from finding Baby-eating aesthetically pleasing?
Edit: I don’t really understand all the down votes, can someone explain to me why I’m wrong or why the post isn’t constructive? :)
Good analysis. But I think someone’s dislike for a thing doesn’t necessarily stem from some easily verbalizable “actual problem” they have with the thing. Deontological rules sound to me like something people just make up. Individual datapoints of moral intuition are higher up in the causal chain than the nice-looking curves we fit to these points.
So I don’t think the actual problem Luke has with monogamy is related to “assuming ownership of another’s sexuality”. It might be more along the lines of “assuming responsibility for another’s sexuality” or “presuming participatory status in another’s non-solo sexuality”, but I’m not sure.
I interpret it as “here are some verbal symbols I can use to manipulate my feelings about a given subject via a vaguely associated other concept that I have a certain emotional affect associated with”. It certainly isn’t something that follows logically and nor is it useful for myself. But evidently it is a useful diff to apply to Luke’s previous mental state.
Do you see a difference between that, and stating a intention to leave the relationship if the other person has sex with someone else? Luckily I currently live in a time and place where these two scenarios are often functionally similar.
Yes, as long as it is not intended as a threat. If not meant as a threat, then it is just a statement of your own preferences (e.g. “I strongly prefer not to be in a relationship that is non-monogamous”). I find such preferences highly suboptimal, but I’m willing to accept that some people are unable to alter them.
That’s how I would interpret it, too, but I don’t think that’s a necessary component of monogamy, despite being the way that many people practice it. Someone could say “I want to be in a monogamous relationship with you if you want to be in one with me,” i.e. the desire for monogamy should be reciprocal rather than forced. A romantic relationship is, ideally, a mutual agreement.
What if I just hang out with you and am ok continuing to do that regardless of your answer, but I tell you in advance (at an early stage before precedence hardens into informal rules or pair bonding takes root) that I won’t commit to a long term relationship unless an agreement to keep the relationship in certain parameters is acceptable to you?
That seems like the optimal course of action, holding the parameters fixed.
We could also talk about optimizing the parameters for the mutual benefit of the pair, but it is nonobvious to me how one should do that. My intuition points towards something like polyamory, but it’s way too easy to generalize from one example in this situation for me to have much confidence in that.
Can you give examples of beliefs and actions of people who believe they “own other people’s sexualities.”
If I am dating you, and I (explicitly or implicitly) forbid you to have sex with anyone else, then I am assuming ownership of your sexuality, by telling you what you can and cannot do with it.
(I don’t want to speak for eridu and jason, but this is how I interpreted the phrase in the OP.)
I believe that your interpretation of the phrase as it was used is correct, but the more I think about it, the more this is just giving an ugly name to a practice that may or may not be ugly. Any of the following could also be called “assuming ownership of another’s sexuality” if you felt like calling it that:
“I’m aware that you want to go ahead and risk it regardless of what the doctor said, but I’m worried about hurting you and I want to wait another week.”
“While we are in a relationship, don’t have sex with HIV-positive secondary partners, especially not without a condom.”
“Since you’re into it, I forbid you to have an orgasm for the next week. And I’m going to enforce it with this device.”
“Since you’re into doing whatever I say whether it’s your cup of tea or not...” (as above)
“While we are in a relationship, don’t have sex with anyone who isn’t aware of that fact, because it’s dishonest.”
“Because condoms+spermicide are the only form of reversible birth control I can personally take responsibility for and they’re not very reliable, and I don’t want to knock you up, please use another form of birth control too.”
“I am personally unable to tolerate $person and ask that while we are in a relationship, you don’t have sex with $person.”
“I know that you’re an exhibitionist, but can you avoid doing that while I’m in the room? It’s not my thing—and yes, I’d object to being sexiled, I live here.”
And none of the above are incompatible with polyamory. So I don’t think the actual problem Luke has with monogamy is related to “assuming ownership of another’s sexuality”. It might be more along the lines of “assuming responsibility for another’s sexuality” or “presuming participatory status in another’s non-solo sexuality”, but I’m not sure.
(I’m not sure where to put this but am saddened that more people don’t mention it:) Monogamy (monoamory?) is also just a lot more aesthetic in certain ways, at least for me and probably many others. There’s the rich history and culture associated with monogamy. There’s more opportunity to notice small details about the other person. It’s often less dramatic, or when it is dramatic it’s dramatic in aesthetic interesting ways instead of ugly awkward ways. For example, there’s the opportunity for implicit mutual agreements to “cheat” and the drama as those agreements are made, are used as implicit threats of blackmail, are made explicit as if just noticed for the first time but both know that’s silly. That’s a stupid way for things to go downhill but it has certain subtleties to it at least. Monogamy has a neat simplicity. It’s generally more sustainable if so desired, and more easily broken up too.
Buh?
(This comment appears to fail to bridge any nontrivial inferential distances.)
Okay, I shall give an overly melodramatic personal answer, and perhaps it will reflect the preferences of others and perhaps not. But my real answer is really quite specific, I think, even if I would have other reasons if this one didn’t dominate:
There is a certain type of perfection that is hinted at by some of my closed-eye visuals, for example when my mind is altered, that is more of a feeling than anything. The image that is most central to this feeling is a brief image of a modern apartment, elegantly furnished, smallish but not cramped, over 30 stories above ground level overlooking a nice part of some big city. It’s night time, and the apartment is in shadows, and no one is home.
But I can feel that there’s a couple that lives there, and I feel the subtle elegance of that kind of life. It’s like… they’re young, rich, well-dressed but not showy, well-cultured but not show-offs. They’re at peace, especially with each other, though they spend most of their time apart. They radiate a certain gentleness and a certain elegance, but it’s subtle and you’d only really be able to tell if you looked, but if you looked it’d be obvious. They have a single luxury car, an expensive guitar, an expensive DSLR, expensive furniture and a refrigerator filled with quality food, but they don’t have many possessions nor any real responsibilities. They vacation often. Neither has many friends, and their friends don’t much overlap, but the friends they have are close, and varied in skills and interests. A photographer, a mathematician, a monk, a business executive; though by no means are their friends one-dimensional. The couple lead a life that could scarcely be simpler, and yet with so many hints of richness, a certain kind of complexity that springs from the recursion of mutual understanding that is only tractable when everything is elegant. But really those are all just details that are filled in by the emotional tone of the image of that apartment, masked in shadows with nobody home.
It’s really a lot less melodramatic than I’m making it sound, but… I know a girl who I can easily delude myself into thinking could have lived a life like that with a counterfactual version of me who didn’t have to keep the stars from burning down—didn’t have to save her. But that is samsara.
I’m a very aesthetically oriented person, and a happily married one, but this conflation of aesthetics with the happiness of a relationship feels very strange to me. Have you tried making things suit you aesthetically and found that it really makes you happy, or is this all theory?
-
Eliot:
and of course
I read about a rather large number of dystopias, weirdtopias with strongly dystopic aspects, and cultures with awful practices, and never before have I wanted to run away from a lifestyle this badly. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
This comment actually succeeds in conveying ideas.
Eenh.
It could well be that I’m still missing something, but that sounds like it fails on at least number 2 of Eliezer’s laws of fun.
We’ve reached the point in the conversation where I go “okay” and politely depart rather than telling someone what they should or shouldn’t want, though.
It’s very possible that I (naively introspectively) value “fun” a lot less than others do. As a human, I care a lot more about (the aesthetics of) perfection, probably because I’m so disturbed that so few others seem to care about it like I do and thus see “caring about (the aesthetics of) perfection” as my comparative advantage. As a transhuman or a Buddha, /shrugs.
I share this entire sentiment and feeling :( I hold out for the hope that i wont always share this feeling.
In the sense that it is very difficult to understand or that everything it says is obvious or some combination of the two?
More the former, though I don’t think that it’s difficult-to-understand in the usual sense—my impression is that it’s distinctly more subjective than that.
I understand that some people find monogamy aesthetically pleasing, and can write that off as personal preference and ignore it in general. You seemed to be trying to give a better model than that, but none of your examples really hit the mark, there. (Is the bit about cheating supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing?) I’m actually somewhat inclined to argue the ‘noticing details’ point, even—that’s mostly a matter of having the opportunity to observe a person in a variety of situations, in my experience, and it seems to me that adding an extra spouse or two would help with that, not hinder it.
Babyeating is also just a lot more aesthetic in certain ways, at least for me and probably many others. There’s the rich history and culture associated with babyeating.
How is this related to preferences or aesthetics concerning relationship styles?
(If you want to argue that monogamy is some value that I hold because I haven’t reflected upon it enough or thought things through from first principles and am instead supporting the legacy system out of status quo bias or Stockholm syndrome, as is really the only non-obvious argument to make, then you’ll have to go about it a lot more directly. If you’re saying that monogamy is reliably painful for at least one party where polyamory counterfactually would have eased that pain then you would need to substantiate that claim with evidence. If you’re not trying to say that then what are you trying to say, besides “My experience and introspection tell me that I don’t seem to share your values!”?)
You are reciting culturally-inherited cached thoughts about monogamy that seem as alien to me as babyeating is to humans. Your statements don’t have much information associated with them, but are just cheers for monogamy.
Ah, but that isn’t particularly true in the way you’re thinking it is—why be so uncharitable? I wouldn’t assume that your aversion to monagamy is the result of culturally-inherited cached cheers; it’s not socially polite or epistemicly hygienic. Anyway. I did indeed get many of my aesthetics from my culture, but insofar as you’re implying that I have not carefully reflected upon those aesthetics, you are mistaken. (Like many folk here I am significantly more reflective than your average person, and reflective on my process of reflection, and so on, because I mean what else do I have to do all day?) I agree that my statements don’t have much information to them, but I don’t really see them as “cheers” for monogamy—more like “things that I notice I like about monogamy relative to polygamy”. I do have some personal experience on the matter, I’m not simply armchair theorizing or extrapolating from books. It is clear that I should have added a sentence to that effect, or a clause saying “in my experience” to the relevant sentences.
Nobody ever went broke underestimating humans.
See the U.S. governments recent political crisis, and the resolution.
If I believed you (I don’t) then I would point out that this should not lead you to weaken your estimation of Will’s point.
Will made very few points, and instead, cheered for monogamy. I intended to point this out by replacing the thing being cheered for, monogamy, with a different thing in the LessWrong zeitgeist, babyeating.
Non-Babyeating is also just a lot more aesthetic in certain ways, at least for me and probably many others. There’s the rich history and culture associated with non-babyeating.
I think you are misusing the example. The lesson of three worlds collide wasn’t that Babyeaters should obviously stop eating babies, it was that different beings have different and potentially mutually incompatible values. Why in the world would Baby-eaters want or work towards changing away from finding Baby-eating aesthetically pleasing?
Edit: I don’t really understand all the down votes, can someone explain to me why I’m wrong or why the post isn’t constructive? :)
Good analysis. But I think someone’s dislike for a thing doesn’t necessarily stem from some easily verbalizable “actual problem” they have with the thing. Deontological rules sound to me like something people just make up. Individual datapoints of moral intuition are higher up in the causal chain than the nice-looking curves we fit to these points.
I interpret it as “here are some verbal symbols I can use to manipulate my feelings about a given subject via a vaguely associated other concept that I have a certain emotional affect associated with”. It certainly isn’t something that follows logically and nor is it useful for myself. But evidently it is a useful diff to apply to Luke’s previous mental state.
Do you see a difference between that, and stating a intention to leave the relationship if the other person has sex with someone else? Luckily I currently live in a time and place where these two scenarios are often functionally similar.
Yes, as long as it is not intended as a threat. If not meant as a threat, then it is just a statement of your own preferences (e.g. “I strongly prefer not to be in a relationship that is non-monogamous”). I find such preferences highly suboptimal, but I’m willing to accept that some people are unable to alter them.
That’s how I would interpret it, too, but I don’t think that’s a necessary component of monogamy, despite being the way that many people practice it. Someone could say “I want to be in a monogamous relationship with you if you want to be in one with me,” i.e. the desire for monogamy should be reciprocal rather than forced. A romantic relationship is, ideally, a mutual agreement.
What if I just hang out with you and am ok continuing to do that regardless of your answer, but I tell you in advance (at an early stage before precedence hardens into informal rules or pair bonding takes root) that I won’t commit to a long term relationship unless an agreement to keep the relationship in certain parameters is acceptable to you?
That seems like the optimal course of action, holding the parameters fixed.
We could also talk about optimizing the parameters for the mutual benefit of the pair, but it is nonobvious to me how one should do that. My intuition points towards something like polyamory, but it’s way too easy to generalize from one example in this situation for me to have much confidence in that.