Do people really think sex is needed to live?

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

78. Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex....

Your opening salvo and constant drumbeat in the thread always comes back to the idea that men just want to and believe they are owed putting the penis into the vagina. It's the same sexist, what you would call patriarchal, bullshit stereotype you claim to be against.

But let's talk about intimacy.

Eliot Rodgers could not be helped with that. He had no chance of ever being intimate with a woman. He was too self absorbed, too much of a narcissist. And any chance he'd open his real twisted self up to another person would be met with revulsion by any sane person. He was only in love with himself. Up until the point he looked in the mirror and probably realized he was the one he hated most.

But your question was not about Eliot Rodgers, but in general. I'm sure you also weren't including women, but I will. And it's not always about sex. Some people crave intimate physical contact with another person, male or female, same sex, whatever. They see other people having it, holding hands in the park, kissing at the mall and it gets to them. It depresses them. Men and women. Gay and straight. And lack of intimacy leads to depression. A general feeling one is an outcast. These people generally don't even have a close circle of friends and often are distant from family as well. A lot of them were bullied as kids, and this is merely an extension of not having any friends whatsoever.

Those people often live their lives, to it's natural end. Is it fulfilling or fun? Can it be classified as a life well lived? Probably not. Some of those people commit suicide. The .01% who suffer from such severe mental illness such as Eliot Rodgers might take it out on others before exiting the earth.

And some of them go online and angrily spout off about it sometimes. And that's all they do. Most of them are so removed from society, they will have zero impact on anyone's life and fade into anonymity when they die. Which probably is the real problem for them. Their biggest moment might be when the local paper runs a small announcement in the death notices asking for someone to claim their remains.

No, no one needs sex to live. They don't even need intimacy. A man or a woman can go their entire life without cuddling, without sharing a piece of cake off the same fork, without a goodbye kiss before a long trip....sure. But to mock them for being depressed about wanting it, and not having it? Their inability to articulate that feeling? To dismiss them as "fat/short/bald losers who can't get laid" or "ugly old maids" and mock them with the usual "cry me a river" insults? It's wrong and shows a total lack of empathy for the human condition. It's actually privilege if you think about it. I feel extremely lucky I have a close but wide circle of friends, figured it out about romance after the common rough years as a teen and early 20-something wondering what was "wrong" with me that things never seemed to work out, and have a great family unit. I feel pain for those who won't ever know that feeling, and there are many men and women who won't. Mocking them is cruel, and yet it seems to be the one form of bullying that's cool to the people who claim to be against bullying. Ignoring them seems to be the more prevalent choice of society, but that's heartbreaking in of itself. Shyness and social/public anxiety is a real thing, and being offended because they occasional express frustration in an inarticulate fashion in an attempt to blow off steam (verbally, not physically) is a pretty minor grievance compared to what those folks go thru daily.