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Sexual schizophrenia
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A recent online New York Times interview shows that college students understand the harms associated with smoking. But the article also offers a glimpse of mental schizophrenia when it comes to college students and risky behavior.
While the article shows these students recognize the dangers of smoking, it also reveals that almost none understand the dangers of sexual promiscuity. When it comes to smoking, one student “cannot . . . fathom why someone could—in the face of all the medical evidence that smoking literally kills—take up this habit.” But when it comes to sex, that same student admits wanting to sleep with 14 people before marriage.
It is not surprising that young people want to have sex: that desire has been around forever. Instead, it is disturbing that these students do not recognize how much more dangerous sexual promiscuity can be than smoking.
Smoking, no doubt, has its horrible effects. But whereas one must be exposed to countless numbers of cigarettes over an extended period of time to feel their effects, one must only sleep with the wrong person once to be exposed to STDs like HIV, AIDS (categorized by many as an epidemic), hepatitis, and HPV (which can lead to cervical cancer).
In fact, the Centers for Disease Control estimate that 1 in 4 women between the ages of 14 and 19 have an STD. Not to mention that sex may, even despite our best efforts, actually produce what God intended it to—a baby. The lust for pleasure, it seems, skews the perception of risks.
While some may applaud the students’ aversion to smoking, these people, like the students, overlook a simple, important point: one or two cigarettes cannot change your life forever; one or two one night stands can.
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Soul searching
except that it is somewhere near equally possible that one or two cigarettes can change your life forever (like get you started smoking), and conversely you can have one night stands without changing your life at all .
weak versions of pascals wager aren’t going to convince people to not do what they feel like doing. you need to stick with the Stone Adulterers meme it seems to work better.
OK, Erasmus, what are the upsides of promiscuous extra marital sex?
After “It feels good!” and “I like it!”, then what?
Jonathon Seidl
Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder . . symptoms of withdrawal into self, a severe psychiatric disorder with symptoms of emotional instability, detachment from reality, and withdrawal into the self. Sexual promiscuity is defined by indiscriminate sexual contact. One is a mental illness, the other is born out of lust and sin.
Schizophrenia is also a term for “of two minds” or “a state characterized by two incompatible or contradictory elements.”
When you can show where Mr. Seidl’s post medicalizes sin, you’ll have a point.
Until then
SG
SG,
Wikipedia says that “Despite its etymology, schizophrenia is not synonymous with dissociative identity disorder, previously known as multiple personality disorder or split personality; in popular culture the two are often confused.” And using the word in a figurative sense to refer to “two minds” or “two incompatible or contradictory elements” continues that confusion.
Unfortunately the word has been used so often in the latter sense that it has made it into at least some dictionaries with that meaning. That’s what happens to words - they get misused long enough that they take on the new meaning. I don’t generally complain because tbat’s just how languages are.
But having a nephew who has recently been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, my mother also having had that disorder, and having friends whose son has schizophrenia, I would rather than people didn’t confuse the two ideas. I was surprised to learn that my mother had schizophrenia, because I didn’t think she had any “extra” personalities (the one she had was hard enough to deal with!). But a social worker (whom I used to carpool with) explained to me that schizophrenia had nothing to do with that. But lots of people think it does, and will probably think my nephew and my friends’ son have multiple personalities, if they learn of the diagnosis.
So I’m with Victoria on wishing people wouldn’t use the word in the other sense.
How about, “It feels fantastic” and “A biological imperative as old as human history leaves me in a state of constant craving for it.”
Extramarital sex is sin, but to confront that sin honestly we can’t trivialize it. It’s not as simple as picking a bad bargain at the supermarket or the wrong door on Bob Barker’s set. The decision to have sex is not one people arrive at after rational consideration of all alternatives.
Pauline
I have read a few of your posts on this subject. If feel badly for you, this must have been difficult. I have two close friends who suffer from schizophrenia. It’s been heartbreaking to watch.
I dislike anyone using the word schizophrenia when making a comparison to something which has nothing to do with the problem.
GOD bless you Pauline
One might also want to keep in mind that those STDs are not randomly distributed.
The person of “easy virtue” that is most likely to randomly “hook up” with you is also the most likely to be one of the ones with the STD.
In addition ot the disease angle - there is the psychological/emotional angle. Promiscuous sex is damaging to the psyche.
Having a brother with a 25+ year history of paranoid schizophrenia, I also dislike casual usage of the term to denote mixed motivation or mindset. But, whatever.
What I dislike even more about this article is the inability to acknowledge the existence of “safe sex” practices. Even if you are “morally” opposed, you should at least acknowledge that part of the behavior here is influenced by the fact that there are low-risk ways to have sex, and most college students know this!
spinoza - there isn’t any ‘latex’ for the psyche. And actual latex isn’t 100% against disease.
Spinoza
I couldn’t agree with you more (first paragraph)-
Cognitive dissonance is probably a better term.
Our San Antonio paper recently ran a big Sunday cover story about a 14 year old mother. She got pregnant at aged 13.
And she is not a rarity down here by any stretch.
It’s too simplistic to just refer to sex outside of marriage. There are all kinds of permutations.
Getting pregnant at 13 is obviously bad. Being 23 and living in a sexual-but-unmarried monogamous partnership is not so obviously bad. Being in your 20s and 30s and sleeping with any willing person is shallow at best and probably psychologically damaging. Being 50 and widowed and having a couple of steady but non-exclusive partners is maybe not so obviously damaging.
It may all be sin to you, but it’s not all the same thing. Not all non-marital sex is promiscuous, or risky.
Board approves gifts for students at dance
April 07, 2008
By Bob Unruh
“Students attending the Bisbee High School Prom will be given gifts bags containing pictures frames, candles, mints and two condoms per bag. The board members voted four to one in favor of allowing the gift bags to be distributed,” the newspaper article said.
Spinoza - most college students who are engaging in sexually risky behavior have been well indoctrinated in the public schools about so-called safe sex. Apparently, that education is failing to prevent the behavior and STDs its proponents are touting.
There is no feel-good factor in the initial smoke. At first glance, common sense seems to say, “Let me get this straight: you want me to light this thing on fire and then breathe these hot fumes directly into my lungs by sucking on it? What ABOUT that sounds like a good idea?”
Sex seems to be all about the feel good and that, in our hedonistic culture trumps indoctrination by the village.
Another thread about young people and sex.
OK, I’ll jump to the point - liberals are unable to admit that consensual sex can be irresponsible and destructive, or wrong.
There, I said it.
Amphipolis: You said it. And you’re still wrong.
See #14.
For me, Sexual addiction is a cunning and baffling condition. Not to say every college student is a sex addict but for me there was an aspect where intelligence and reason just shut off. Information was not enough in this area. It was dealing with a form of insanity that cropped up in an otherwise intelligent and reasoned person.
#17 & #18
To both of you, again, “what are the upsides of promiscuous extra marital sex?”
To me, from a Christian perspective, it is wrong.
I understand that from a non-Christian view, it is OK to good. (Unless you are Muslim, then both, or is it just the woman, should be killed.)
#14 SteveG,
Amphipolis is correct. Your thought, while correct on a technicality, that ‘Not all non-marital sex is promiscuous, or risky.’ is why we have pregnant unmarried young women, unwanted children, abortions, epidemic STDs, killing AIDS and kids generally taking their lives in their own hands by having sex in all the ways that are risky and promiscuous.
You are a prime example of liberals who are unable to admit that consensual sex can be irresponsible, destructive, wrong and deadly.
Not to mention that safe sex out of wedlock is by definition promiscuous and a sin. I know you don’t like definitions but you are so wrong and and your thought just plain kills people, could ruin their lives or create medical epidemics that could cause sterility.
But we can’t fix stupid.
You people around here are a trip — you latch on to every tiny sub-point and make a mountain out of a molehill. There used to be a pretty high level of conversation here at WORLDmagblog before all these Christian nitpickers and liberal trolls ruined the place.
Anyway, how bout a practical counterpoint to the commandment vs. feel-good opinions. I’ve been monogamously married to a Christian girl for 20 years, and she is the mother of my 5 kids. No one can tell me that a quick roll in the sheets with a stranger is preferable to a committed lifetime relationship with the wife of your youth. She knows me and I know her and we understand what each other like and try to please. Frankly, STD risks notwithstanding, I don’t know how one could find anything satisfying with someone you just met. And a happy, stable committed relationship is the best context for siring and raising children. And that’s why God gave you genitals, not to play with like a toy.
The young liberal scoffers on this board will no doubt scorn the above, but just wait til you’re 50 and not so cute anymore, and neither are the girls your age. You wake up one morning in an empty bed, and realize that you shared your days with no one in particular, and now you are all alone for the rest of your days. Maybe then you can ponder whether maybe, just maybe, God’s way might have been the right way after all.
Well said Jay.
jay
And YOU have come here to ’save the day’?
Many Believers have made good points, certainly you don’t believe you are the only ONE to add to the discussion who isn’t - - “Christian nitpickers and liberal trolls ruined the place.”
Mr Seidl,
Perhaps the most well-written article I’ve read in the last 31 years. Keep it up.
VH
- 25 -
Really? How often do you read?
Sounds to me like Victoria may have at some point in her life claimed to be Noah Webster’s wife. It’s obvious that the people opposed to the author’s use of the word schizophrenia clearly wish to take the focus off of the content of the article itself.
#27 “It’s obvious that the people opposed to the author’s use of the word schizophrenia clearly wish to take the focus off of the content of the article itself.”
SPSTAINERS,
Not at all. I can’t speak for other people, but I post comments to say what I think is worth saying, whether it is directly related to the topic of the post or not. There is genuine confusion over the nature of the psychiatric disorder schizophrenia, and the use of the word in this other sense only serve to reinforce that confusion.
If the students in fact are well aware of the dangers of casual sex, but choose to deny that the dangers exist, there might be a good case for using some word that means “of two minds” or “a state characterized by two incompatible or contradictory elements” (using the definition SG cited in #4). But I would guess that for a great many college students, any warnings that they have received about the dangers of sex are likely to seem to have been overhyped in order to scare them out of doing something that their elders consider “immoral.” And in a lot of cases they probably are under the impression that using a condom will protect them pretty well. If they honestly believe the danger of smoking to be much greater than that of premarital sex, then their behavior is not inconsistent or contradictory. Still dangerous, yes - just as cigarette smoking was dangerous back when it was actually being touted for its health benefits.
So while it is a real problem that needs attention, I just don’t think “schizophrenia” - in whichever sense it is used - is the appropriate description.
spstainers
The word schizophrenia hasn’t anything to do with those who engage in casual sex. It’s a misuse of a word, which definition is a mental illness. Using the word in such a fashion, only exhibits a lack of knowledge and education.
The individual who wrote this piece above, should have been more thoughtful as to the meaning of the word rather than using it in such a haphazard way. Many people suffer from schizophrenia, their feelings should be considered.
Often times people when trying to be flip, will make a comment about retardation, which many families have had to cope with. It’s a sad thing when children have any sort of mental disorder…..the names of these disorders should NEVER be used in a careless way.
Pauline, good points!