1. You will have more time for sleeping.
2. Chastity provides excellent protection against sexually transmitted diseases and - barring interventions by scheming deities - against unwanted pregnancies.
3. Chastity promotes trust and new friendships by easing some of the pressures and complications of social interaction.
4. Chastity protects existing friendships. Though sex can in many instances deepen friendships, it can also be a potent friendship-killer, not only in respect of the relationship between the lovers, but also in terms of collateral damage to other, third-party, relationships.
5. Chastity takes some of the urgency out of sexual orientation and gender identity issues. It allows one to apply a kind of dialetheic logic to these matters. You can be this, that, both and neither all at once.
6. Chastity is a way of rebelling against the evolutionary mechanisms and imperatives which dominate most human behavior and which exert complete and utter control over the behavior of all other animals.
7. Chastity will free your mind for other things, like flirting or quantum physics or contributing trenchant comments to obscure conservative blogs.
8. Chastity requires no pledges, promises, vows or contracts.
9. It is invisible, imponderable and completely non-toxic.
10. Most importantly, chastity is not anti-sex: chastity and sex go hand-in-hand. Chastity adds value to sex. And sex gives chastity its meaning.
Hear, hear! I'll vote for all of them.
ReplyDeleteBetter than trenchant? Greetings Mary.
ReplyDeleteFar too rational to penetrate young minds.
ReplyDeleteI particularly like reasons three through five.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Heathen is right: Most young minds are too hopped up on hormones to see chastity as anything but a buzzkill.
Heathen, you are probably right. But my expectations for successful communication about ideas etc. are always low. In general I think that other minds - young or old - are only penetrated if those other minds already have similar dispositions to one's own.
ReplyDeleteHortensio, I know you're not into fiction but reason four is always associated in my mind with a story which made an impression on me when I was in my teens and which you may know - Maupassant's Petit soldat.
ReplyDeleteI'm not game enough to put a personal view on this topic, but for the sake of discussion here's a contrary line of argument -- one with some quasi-scientific authority.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/08/sex-is-stressful-but-good-for-you/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previous
I didn't actually know Petit soldat but I just finished reading it.
ReplyDeleteIt is quite moving, and that is the sort of thing i was thinking of as well.
Alan, that piece of research is interesting as far as it goes and it may even apply to humans to an extent. If one's goal was to enhance cognitive abilities, I suspect however that there might be many other activities which would be more effective.
ReplyDeleteSex is good, sex is fine, but it can cause problems and it's often difficult to manage. Even very mature and intelligent people with a lot to lose routinely make fools of themselves. How much harder is it for young people? I'm sure you would agree that there are elements in our culture which are not only vulgar and ugly but which also do harm to individuals by encouraging precocious sexual behavior and activity, for instance.