About Sex

You don't have to have sex if you don't want to.

Maybe that seems obvious, but some people act like it's not true--like sex is just something you need to do, like eating your vegetables or filing your taxes, but supposedly more fun.

If you're having sex less than six times a month, rest assured that you're not alone. There's this article (Times) that talks about how the Millennial generation is having less frequent sex and will probably end up with fewer sex partners compared to previous generations. Then there's this other article (The Guardian) about how just about everyone is having less sex these days, compared to 10 or 20 years ago.

Now, the tone and purpose of that second article is just kind of baffling. It opens up with the idea that sex is a recreational activity and has decreased in prevalence because people have better things to do. Then it talks about how people often find sex to be stressful and unpleasant. Then it tries to convince you to go out and force yourself to have sex, even if you aren't in a relationship, because... no reason. I reread the article looking for any mentions of upsides of sex, and there weren't any. Not even some BS stat about oxytocin or anything. The author apparently thinks sex is inherently awesome and just assumes that everyone else agrees.

It's like some weird religious belief. (Or maybe it just feels like that to me because it reminds me of how some people will try to reference the Christian Bible to convince you of something, without first checking whether you're even a Christian.) This article isn't the only place I've seen this attitude. Even the counselor I went to kept getting hung up on my allegedly unconventional sex life, even though I was paying her ridiculous sums of money for help on my executive function problems and I repeatedly informed her that I'm quite happy with the lack of sex I'm having.

None of this is intended to dissuade you from having sex if you actually want to. By all means, go out and have as much sex as you want, with other consenting individuals. Use protection. But if you're asexual, or you're too busy, or you're having a dry spell, or you only want to have sex in a committed relationship, or you haven't found anyone who's your type, or if you like sex slightly less than that new video game you're playing... that's okay too! There's nothing wrong with not having sex.

I know most people want to have more sex than I do, since I'm ace, but I'm pretty sure that even among folks who experience sexual attraction, most people aren't sex-crazed lunatics who never ever have anything better to do.

As for why people in general are having less sex these days, that first article mentioned that people are really busy and also that they're less inclined to risky behavior than past generations, and I agree that those things are probably factors. I also have some additional baseless hypotheses about why people might be having less sex:

Sex is less mysterious than it used to be. In the past, if you had any curiosity or cognitive interest in sex, your only option for satisfaction was to go have sex. Nowadays, that's not necessary. You can read informative books or Internet pages, you can watch porn videos, you can read erotic fiction... Heck, if you have the radio in your car on a Top 40 station, you'll probably spend your whole commute to work hearing mostly songs with sex-related lyrics. Advertisements are full of sex implications. Sex is everywhere. Sex isn't inherently cool anymore.

(Personally, I think sex is really interesting, but actually having sex tends to be a much bigger hassle and less fulfilling than any of the other sex-related activities I could be doing.)

Easier access to masturbation aids. There is no longer any need to treat your fellow humans like walking masturbation aids. You can easily buy a vibrator or other device in a local shop in your town, or online. The Internet is overflowing with free porn. If your main motivation for sex is either relaxation or libido relief, you can easily take care of it yourself.

We are more empowered about sex. This is like the first time in recorded history that people have the option of not having sex if they don't want to! In many past generations, the only way to avoid sex was to have your entire life revolve around celibacy by becoming a nun or something. The Bible says spouses have a duty to have sex with each other, and it seems like a lot of non-Christian areas had similar ideas. Did you know that it was completely legal for a man to rape his wife in some parts of the USA as recently as 1993? Ridiculous.

But it's now 2015! Feel free to go around having ONLY as much as sex as you want!

Thoughts about Neurodiversity

You may have noticed a disparity of opinions on autism or a cure thereof, and I want to explain what I believe that disparity comes from. Not that I can speak for others, but I'd say my views on this are similar to the "neurodiversity acceptance" camp, but framed here in a slightly different way than I usually see it, and contrary to most medical groups or the "cure" camp.

The short version is that neurodiversity (e.g. autism spectrum) is a perfectly okay non-disabling trait that has a high likelihood of being packaged with some other traits that actually are disabling.

What is a disorder?

Before I go further, let me do an analogy. Diabetes is a health problem. Generally no one is going to argue that diabetes is not a health problem. Although any cloud can have a silver lining, diabetes is unquestionably a Bad Thing that we would all like to not have. Diabetes treatments are important, and we would like to have a cure for diabetes.

In the USA, black people are more likely to have diabetes than the general population. That does NOT mean that being black is a health problem! They're not even the only ones who get diabetes. It might make sense for social services to focus a little more diabetes help to the black population or for parents to give their black kids more diabetes prevention advice, but if anyone suggested that we need to find a "cure for black," everyone would think they're nuts and rightfully so. Actually, it's not just diabetes, there are a lot of problems that differ in prevalence by race, and the African-American population tends to get the short straw on a lot of them. But even if it were possible (and it probably is) to make black kids look indistinguishably like white kids, that's not a worthy goal. That wouldn't even fix most of their problems. The only thing it would fix would be people discriminating against them, but that problem could be better solved by everyone else not being racist.

Neuro-types are the same way. All of the negative characteristics of autism fall into one or more of these categories:

1. There is another disorder which describes that problem, and you could have just been diagnosed with some other disorders instead (e.g. Social Communication Disorder, Social-Emotional Learning Disability, Sensory Processing Disorder, Executive Function Disorder, etc)
2. A lot of non-autistic people have that problem, and they are impaired by it despite not having autism (e.g. low IQ, everything in category A)
3. A lot of autistic people don’t have that problem (e.g. non-verbal, low IQ, etc)
4. Lots of autistic people have that problem but it’s not even part of the official diagnostic criteria (e.g. auditory processing problems, executive function problems—previously this was the case with sensory problems too! And I've heard a lot of us have gastrointestinal problems for reason.)
5. It’s not legitimately impairing, but many non-autistic people will look down on you and treat you badly because of it (e.g. unusual body language, less eye contact than normal, non-disruptive stimming, sometimes even introversion)

The problem comes from the way neurotypicality and autism are defined. The ASD diagnostic criteria does not accurately describe the real problem. 

In other words, most people who are impaired or disabled by symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder could have their impairments explained by another disorder or a combination of disorders, instead of ASD. For example, the social issues of SPCD plus repetitive behaviors caused by SPD. In some cases, it may be a disorder that's not defined yet.

Most people who are diagnosed with ASD are disordered, impaired, or disabled in some way, especially if they were diagnosed as adults. They need actual help with their actual problems... but I don't think autism is their problem. 

The broad idea of autism

There is a concept called Broad Autistic Phenotype (BAP) which describes autistic traits independant of disability. The qualities are aloof personality, rigid personality, and pragmatic language problems, but that's "I hate people who don't fulfill my extroversion needs"-speak for untalkative introversion and a fondness for consistancy and predictibility. You might see the occassional article talking about BAP like it's a mild developmental disorder, but it's not officially a disorder--and it shouldn't be. I guess you could call it a personality type.

There has been very little research into BAP, and most of the research that has been done is on the family members of children diagnosed with ASDs. (Research found that family membes of ASD kids were more likely to have BAP qualities than the general population.) Unfortunately, even on the studies that focus on non-disordered people with BAP, something about the study wording made it sound like the researchers considered BAP to be a bad thing.

I think people with BAP tend to be more similar to autistics than they are to NTs but they are considered NTs (especially if they don't have ASD family members) because they don't fit the sketchy diagnostic criteria for ASDs. Some may be disabled by autistic-typical problems that are not in the diagnostic criteria, or some may have autistic-typical problems that aren't bad enough to cause "clinically significant impairment," and some may be totally non-disabled altogether.

There is almost no research about this type of people or this type of brain. There's even less value-neutral research or information about the strengths and weaknesses of this group compared to other groups. Autism is considered to be a disorder because it impairs people, but only impaired people can be considered to have autism.

Neurotypical people are called that because they are the majority, but I bet they could be divided into more precise categories if they weren't defined solely by their lack of an ASD diagnosis. Maybe some of those hypothetical categories have a higher likelihood of certain problems or impairments. For example, autistic people sometimes have a problem with non-literal language, but I've seen a lot of people (not all or even most NTs) who apparently have the opposite problem: they have difficulty taking things literally when they're supposed to, they read non-existent inferences into things, and it seems to cause them problems. I can't help but think if we had better language for different neuro-types, we'd have better research, and everyone would benefit.

I say "probably"/"maybe"/"seems" so much, and I don't provide any stats to support these ideas, because as far as I know, these things aren't studied from this perspective or any similar perspective.

Implications for Treatment

This is why there's so much debate about looking for a "cure." Some people are offended by the suggestion that autism needs to be cured or even diagnosed, and  compare it to curing or diagnosing homosexuality. I think people who hold that perspective consider "autism" to refer to BAP, not ASD, even if they've never heard of BAP.

I WANT a cure for my executive function deficits.
I WANT a cure for my debilitating sensory defensiveness.
I WANT a cure for my gastrointestinal problems.
I WANT a cure for my social anxiety.
And I think I--and everyone else--should've been given some actual human relations education during those years I wasted in school, rather than having to home-school myself as an adult.
But I DON'T WANT a cure for my personality. I don't need a cure for my other harmless traits.

The above problems have ruined most of my life and will continue ruining it until I get some kind of treatment for it. But people who have a problem with my uncommon gestures, lack of eye-to-eye gaze, untalkativeness, or introversion can go screw themselves. But which of my traits are considered to come from "autism"?

It seems like most research about autism cures and treatments is concerned about things like eye contact and rocking and generally making kids look "normal." Apparently no one cares that toothpaste is painful or that the idea of mailing a prepared envelope emotionally crushes me.

The prevailing idea among people who want to cure autism seems to be that the Broader Autism Phenotype is a bad thing, but not bad enough to be called a disorder, unless you have an unusually bad case of it, in which case it's called ASD instead of BAP. I'm arguing that BAP is a perfectly okay trait that unfortunately comes with a higher predisposition to certain disorders. I can't help but feel like people diagnosed with ASD actually just have BAP plus some other disorder(s), and it's those disorders that are the problem, not BAP or autism. Meanwhile, the people with BAP and no disorders aren't diagnosed with anything, which is how it should be.

Unfortunately, society seems to have trouble handling more than a couple different disorders. (For example, if you're a parent trying to get your kid disability accomodations in school, you're likely going to have a hard time regardless, but it'll be be even harder if it's a disorder the staff has never heard of or doesn't believe in. And we're always having to try to convince the uninformed masses that people with [insert disorder] aren't inherently dangerous sociopaths, but now imagine if autism were replaced with fifty other disorders and we had to convince people about all of them!) Even though I feel like no one should be "diagnosed" with autism, I'm still pursuing a diagnosis of autism (ASD) for myself. Why? Because I need help with the above problems, and hardly anyone has ever heard of the more specific disorders that encompass those problems. I actually did try getting help for SPD once, but I found NO ONE who would help. Even though autism is really well-known, I had a hard time finding anyone who would asses or treat autism in adults.

The one upside to autism being this awkward hodgepodge of disorders is that it allows all those problems to at least get a little bit of attention. Still, it'd be better if we started using the word "autism" to refer to BAP, stopped trying to cure it, and started giving all those other disorders the attention they deserve.

A postscript regarding disabilities

Oh, yeah. This is kind of tangential but I want to clarify this one thing... The concept of "I'm not disabled; you're just a jerk" is not supposed to be any kind of alternative, correction, or supplantation of the concept of "I'm disabled and you need to stop being a jerk about it." Sometimes people pathologize traits that should be considered perfectly acceptable, and that's a problem. Sometimes people act like individuals with disabilities can't have any worth or value in their lives, and that's a problem. Those are two separate problems that both exist. Well, my point is, arguing that an alleged disability is an unfairly pathologized trait is not the same as arguing that all disabilities would stop existing if people would stop being jerks.

There are also some people who are troubled by their disability symptoms, but it's such a big part of their personal identity that they feel uncomfortable at the idea of getting rid of it. (I can sympathize a little. Certainly, it's really weird to imagine myself NOT having sensory defensiveness.) They're not the one's I'm talking about in this post, but I don't want to sound like I'm denying that they exist.

Credits

Thanks to some folks on wrongplanet.net (ASpartOfMe, cavernio, Knofskia, B19, WelcomeToHolland, and Aristophones) for helping me solidify these ideas.

Everyone Hates Unsolicited Advice

Seriously. Everyone.

Okay, okay. There are a few people who claim to not hate unsolicited advice... but they're in a very tiny minority. Chances are that family member you're about to give your oh-so-enlightening advice to is not one of those people.

What is unsolicited advice?

"Unsolicited" means the recipient didn't ask for it.

If you're writing something like an article, blog post, and Facebook status that's not addressed to anyone in particular, you can usually advise as much as you want, because anyone who doesn't want to see it can just scroll on past. (Of course, if people consider the advice itself to be inherently offensive or stupid, they will still be offended or think you're stupid.) But comments or responses to posts, posts addressed to a specific category of people (even if not a particular person), or sending a copy or link of an article to someone are all examples of unsolicited advice and you want to avoid them.

If someone does solicit advice from you, that's not a pass to go giving advice on other unrelated topics. Stick to what they asked about, unless there's actually a connection.

By the way, just because someone is complaining about something doesn't mean they're soliciting advice. This is especially true if the person complaining is someone who just plain likes conversation in general.

Why do people hate it?

If my advice for you is really a great idea, you probably already thought of it, and you probably don't appreciate my implication that you aren't capable of thinking of it yourself.

Maybe you agree that my advice is a better alternative to what you're currently doing on that topic, but you don't care enough about it to adjust your lifestyle to receive that benefit.

Maybe you don't have the same values I do. Maybe your problem is important but my proposed solution is too big of a sacrifice. Maybe I have a different goal in mind than you do.

People have different skills and preferences. Even if it's good advice for me, even if the advice could work for you, there could be another way that's easier or better for you. Maybe the situation you're in would be a problem for me but isn't a problem for you.

I surely think I'm knowledgeable on this topic if I'm giving advice, but... maybe I'm not. Maybe you already researched the issue and found out that whatever I'm suggesting is inferior to another solution you found. Maybe my advice is particularly bad.

Unsolicited advice is basically criticism (e.g. whatever you're doing now is inferior to whatever I'm suggesting). Constructive critique can be incredibly useful, but that still doesn't mean you appreciate someone constantly bashing your choices! At some point, it's basically nagging.

If you want to talk about your situation or even answer the question, "How are you?" honestly, you probably don't appreciate me trying to shut you up with advice. Maybe I'm sick of listening to your negativity, but implying that fact through "advice" isn't much more polite than just saying it outright.

Maybe I don't even understand your problem properly, even after you've tried to explain it. Maybe my advice would be a great solution for a different problem than the one that you have.

"Think positive" is not even legit advice.

What if you NEED to give advice? (Or really, really want to?)

Sometimes you have awesome advice that you're pretty sure this other person totally needs. If you're a parent or somebody's boss, it's practically your job to give advice. So here's some tips I've found for giving advice as politely as possible.

DO:

Ask yourself what's the worst that could plausibly happen if you kept your opinion to yourself. Even if you are a parent or boss, that doesn't mean you need to give your child or subordinate every piece of advice that crosses your mind.

Give information and let the recipient decide what to do with it. (e.g. If you watched the weather report and your family member didn't, feel free to say, "By the way, the weather report said it's going to rain today," without adding, "You should take an umbrella.") However, there are two caveats to this tip:

• Make sure you don't state obvious information so that the recipient feels like you're insulting their intelligence.
• Avoid implying what they should do with the info. "If you [insert something other than what they're doing], then [result you think they want]" is usually not acceptable.

Say what worked for you, but keep it very brief. Just say one sentence that starts with something like, "I had a problem kind of like that once, and what worked for me was...." If they are interested in your solution, they will solicit additional information. If you can't fit even a summary of your situation into one sentence, it might work to say, "I had a problem kind of like that once; I can tell you what worked for me if you think it'll help."

In some situations, it can be helpful to let someone know you have advice to give, so they can ask for it if they want, e.g. when my friend and I are playing the same video game and one of us is struggling with a part the other already passed, we'll say, "Let me know if you want to hear how I did it." However, this contains an implicit judgment that the way they're currently doing it is inferior to your way, so it's inappropriate for many situations.

Be humble. Give the person an "out," as in, a prepared excuse for not taking your advice. "I don't know if it'll work for you, but...."

DON'T:

Don't start a sentence with "You should...."

Don't ask, "Why don't you [insert what you think they should do]?" because not only are you advising them, you're demanding that they justify their choices to you.

Don't give them the same advice multiple times for the same problem. There's a reason they didn't take it the first time.

Don't get all pissy when someone doesn't take your advice.

Don't give advice too often. If you nag all the time, the people you nag at will stop taking your suggestions seriously.

Constructive-Selfish

There's this brand of soap you may have heard of call Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap, which is notable because the label is covered in text from the funky religious writings of the company's founder. The writing style is unusual--it often goes off on sudden tangents about how communism is a bad thing and overall sounds like something made by translation software. But one thing I like about it is how, whenever there's not a good word in the English language for a concept he wants to refer to, he just combines words with hyphens to get the same idea. That's how you get terms like "constructive-selfish."

I wanted to pass on some quotes from the peppermint soap advising people to be constructive-selfish:

"1st: If I'm not for me, who am I? Nobody!
2nd: Yet, if I'm only for me, what am I? Nothing!
3rd: If no now, when? Once More: Unless constructive-selfish I work hard perfecting first me, absolute nothing can help me! [...]"

"5th: Whatever unites mankind is better than whatever divides us! Yet, if absolute-unselfish I am not for me, I'm not but classless, raceless, starving masses, never free nor brave! Only if constructive-selfish I work hard perfecting first me, like arctic owls - penguin - pilot - cat - swallow - beaver, bee, can I teach the MORAL ABC'S ALL - ONE - GOD - FAITH [...]"

"7th: Each Swallow works hard to be perfect pilot-provider-builder-trainer-teacher-lover-mate, no half-true hate! So, each day like a bird, perfect thyself first! Have courage and smile my friend. Think and act 10 years ahead! And the man without fault? He's dead! Do one thing at a time, work hard! Get done! [...]"

"12th: A great teacher, must first, a self-supporting hardworker be, like Alesen - Baeck - Carnegie - Cousteau - Hammer - Liebman - Paine - Sanger - Spinoza - Strauss - Szasz - Wilke - Yadin - Zamenhof, or he'll turn our greatest teaching into spades, to bury our people!"

Confession: I only recognize two people from that list of names.

About Empathy

Going to open this blog up with a little complaint of sorts about the word "empathy."

The problem with "empathy" is that the same word is used to refer to a couple different concepts. Because language shapes our ideas, people end up conflating those different concepts into a single thing. Even scientific studies, which you'd think would have to define what they're trying to measure, often end up confusing the different ideas. It's always assumed that lacking one empathy means you lack all of the other empathies, even though that makes no sense because they're completely different traits/skills that just happen to share the same word due to a quirk of our language!

Here are the different ideas I've seen for the word empathy. For the sake of clarity, I'm going to invent new terms for all of them!

1. Emotional Perception

The ability to identify another person's emotional state based on things like facial expression, body language, tone of voice, etc. Obviously, no one can completely read minds, but some people are better at this than others. Society expects you to have a certain level of skill in this.

This is a common problem for people with autism spectrum conditions. Especially when they're children who haven't had as much practice, autistic people often have more trouble than other people identifying what emotions someone is feeling. However, having trouble with this skill, doesn't mean you have trouble with this next one...

2. Anti-Malevolence

Giving a damn about other people's feelings. I've seen this described as trait where your emotions naturally change to become more similar to the emotions of those around you, whether you like it or not, e.g. you are saddened by the sadness of others. This means you want to avoid emotionally hurting other people. I'm not sure that sort of unwilling vicariousness is actually the best way to think of it, but either way, it's basically the same idea as "having a conscience."

I called this anti-malevolence instead of benevolence because it's not necessarily a desire to do good so much as it's a desire to not do harm.

It seems most people have this trait toward some but not all creatures.

The complete lack of this trait is the defining characteristic of sociopathy (aka psychopathy, which should not be confused with psychosis), which is the science-y word for "evil." I once heard a statistic that 4% of people lack this trait, meaning 4% of people are sociopaths. That's one in 25! Kind of scary. Now, just because someone's a sociopath doesn't mean they go around murdering everyone with a chain saw. There are plenty of other reasons a person will choose to behave nicely, such as not getting arrested. Sociopaths who believe in a punitive God will obey their religion's commandments to avoid damnation and/or receive rewards in the afterlife, but they have no problem hurting others when their religion allows or requires it. Non-sociopaths will be decent human beings regardless of whether they believe in God. Non-sociopaths may still act deliberately hurtful toward others, but they'll feel bad about it.

Sociopaths can be (and often are) skilled in identifying and predicting the emotions of others. It's not that they don't understand emotions, it's that they don't care. They can act remorseful, but they won't feel legitimate remorse.

It's also normal for very young children to lack this anti-malevolence. (I'm not sure when they're supposed to grow out of it. I actually vaguely remember my "conscience" kicking in when I was six, but I'm pretty sure I was a late bloomer in this regard.) I think it's because they don't yet have the cognitive development and life experience to truly conceive of other people's emotions, even if they have been informed about the idea.

3. Predictive Prosocialness

The ability to predict what another person's emotional state will be after some hypothetical event, and adjusting your actions to avoid inflicting negative emotions on people, e.g. Bob will probably feel upset if I punch him in the face, so I won't do that.

"Prosocialness" is an awkward-sounding word, but I didn't invent it. Prosocial behavior is "voluntary behavior intended to benefit another."

This is more of a combination of skills than its own trait. In order to make accurate prosocial predictions, you need ALL of these qualities:

a. A motive to avoid upsetting someone (whether it's anti-malevolence, another more selfish reason, or a combination)

b. Cognitive capacity to understand cause and effect in general (kids start to get this around 8 months, but it's not really developed until around three years old--more details here).

c. Enough information to make an accurate prediction. Some events are easier to predict than others, and it's easier to make predictions about people you know well.

d. The means and motive to attempt to make a prediction. People who are highly impulsive (e.g. anyone with hyperactive-type ADHD, most children) will have trouble with this because they tend to go straight from idea to action without pausing to consider other hypotheses about the consequences. But insufficient information could thwart you too, i.e. if it just plain hadn't occurred to you that someone's feelings would be effected by an event, you won't stop to think about HOW their feelings would be effected.

So if someone fails at this, there could be a variety of reasons.

4. Emotional Vicariousness

The ability to understand another person's situation, accurately put yourself in their metaphorical shoes. The more similar another person's situation is to something you've experienced (and remember experiencing), the easier this is.

This is the dictionary definition of empathy: "the psychological identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another."

5. Appreciation of Art

The other dictionary definition of empathy: "the imaginative ascribing to an object, as a natural object or work of art, feelings or attitudes present in oneself." I'm not very knowledgeable about this one, honestly, I just know the idea exists.

Conclusion

Why bother to distinguish between these different ideas, when they can all be called "empathy"? No doubt some people would call it splitting hairs.

Well, lots of people have these traits to different degrees, and things become quite hurtful when they're all seen to correlate. For example, autistic people often have trouble with identifying the emotions of others, so they are often stereotyped as sociopaths. Likewise I've seen some people understate the threat of sociopathy because they figure sociopaths are well-intentioned people with crappy social skills or intellectual disabilities.

We can't spread information about complex ideas without words to represent those ideas.