Sex Slaves Hidden Punishment

cthia wrote:

SWM wrote:Please note that increased libido does not mean perpetual arousal. Libido is a desire for sex, not necessarily the ability to perform sex that instant.

If that desire is cranked up past a certain point, then it's going to begin to affect arousal. Hand in hand again. Unless of course there's a problem achieving arousal, which isn't the case with sex slaves.

And we must differentiate desire. There's the natural desire, the physical desire, where the body is just ready and your thoughts were anywhere but. All men experience that. What?!? I gotta hide this.

Then there is the emotional desire. I just saw Jessica Biel nude under a waterfall in Stealth, now my mind has taken over.

But in the end. Hand in hand. IMHO.

Sure, one affects the other. But they are not the same, and you've been treating them as if they are. Perhaps in your personal experience they are automatically equivalent, but that is not true for everyone all the time.

cthia wrote:

kzt wrote:Viagra doesn't increase desire, it increases the ability to act on desire.

Nice try, but I'm not buying it.
Sounds more than a little hinky to me.
It goes hand in hand. (npi)

swm wrote:No it doesn't. Viagra affects arousal. Libido affects the desire. One can be aroused with low libido. One with high libido can have difficulty getting aroused. They are not equivalent.

One usually leads to the other (in either direction) in the right circumstances. But if circumstances are not right, or other things interfere, or there are physical or mental issues, arousal does not automatically lead to desire for sex and desire for sex does not automatically lead to arousal.

I agree. But if all else is equal, no mental issues, no physical problems inhibiting erection, then one most certainly will lead to the other, or, Mesa wasn't so successful with its C-Line.

Also, I might add that everyone is zeroing in on the weakness of Viagra. Wherein I just threw that out there as food for thought. Viagara doesn't even come close to what Mesa did. Viagra makes it a physical thing, leading you with your second brain.

Mesa bypassed all of that. It is now innate.
And if Mesa engineered the desire for sex without the arousal then the sex slaves are not going to be so successful. I want to have sex but I am not aroused. The females will not be...lubricated. The men will not have an erection. They have to be turned on together if that is their everpresent mission in life.

I see your point and what you're driving at, but I just don't think the two can be separated. If your ultimate goal is to produce successful sex slaves.

"How was she?"

"Ok, but she just wasn't into it."

You are missing my point, Cthia. All of your statements seem to imply that the increased libido that Mesa put into sex slaves means that they are constantly in a state of sexual frustration, causing mental stress on the poor slaves. That is a complete misunderstanding of what the libido is. In the original post, you asked:

Am I wrong in thinking that this is akin to a constant injection of viagra into the bloodstream? Talk about being in a constant state of sexual frustration! This is its own punishment. Holy crap on a cracker! Am I looking at it wrongly?

and I am telling you, you are looking at it wrongly. It is nothing like a constant injection of Viagra, and does not lead to a constant state of sexual frustration.

SWM wrote:You are missing my point, Cthia. All of your statements seem to imply that the increased libido that Mesa put into sex slaves means that they are constantly in a state of sexual frustration, causing mental stress on the poor slaves. That is a complete misunderstanding of what the libido is. In the original post, you asked:

Am I wrong in thinking that this is akin to a constant injection of viagra into the bloodstream? Talk about being in a constant state of sexual frustration! This is its own punishment. Holy crap on a cracker! Am I looking at it wrongly?

and I am telling you, you are looking at it wrongly. It is nothing like a constant injection of Viagra, and does not lead to a constant state of sexual frustration.

You are absolutely correct in that viagra does not increase the libido. I already yielded to my analogy of viagra being an incorrect one. But it was only intended to be an analogy.

Stenographer, strike all references to viagra.

This still leaves us with an increased libido. Increased libido increases the desire for sex.

I think what you are proposing is that Mesa's increasing the libido in sex slaves merely made them open to the idea of having sex, if it should come along.

I am positing that that sounds hinky. If a person takes an orexigenic, a drug that increases appetite, then said person will seek food until the urge is satisfied, a full stomach.

So I'm thinking that if a person's libido is increased they're going to seek sex. An increased sexual appetite. Until that craving is stymied. Which will be never because what Mesa did isn't chemical, its genetic.

cthia wrote:This still leaves us with an increased libido. Increased libido increases the desire for sex.

I think what you are proposing is that Mesa's increasing the libido in sex slaves merely made them open to the idea of having sex, if it should come along.

I am positing that that sounds hinky. If a person takes an orexigenic, a drug that increases appetite, then said person will seek food until the urge is satisfied, a full stomach.

So I'm thinking that if a person's libido is increased they're going to seek sex. An increased sexual appetite. Until that craving is stymied. Which will be never because what Mesa did isn't chemical, its genetic.

I agree with you that increased libido causes (actually, is essentially defined as) an increased appetite for sex. I disagree with your repeated implications that this increased appetite causes sexual frustration or mental or emotional stress. There is nothing inherently unhealthy about an increased libido.

For comparison: Honor Harrington has an increased appetite for food, several times normal levels. Is it unhealthy for her to have such an appetite? Is it inherently cruel that she is inflicted with increased appetite? So why would you say that an increased appetite for sex is cruel or unhealthy? Increased appetite does not mean needing it every second of every day. And while lack of fulfillment at regular intervals may cause stress (more mental and emotional than physical, I imagine), there is no reason to believe that the people with this trait are unable to meet the need regularly. Just as perfectly normal people today with increased libidos can. The trait itself is not uncommon in the normal human population.

SWM wrote:

cthia wrote:This still leaves us with an increased libido. Increased libido increases the desire for sex.

I think what you are proposing is that Mesa's increasing the libido in sex slaves merely made them open to the idea of having sex, if it should come along.

I am positing that that sounds hinky. If a person takes an orexigenic, a drug that increases appetite, then said person will seek food until the urge is satisfied, a full stomach.

So I'm thinking that if a person's libido is increased they're going to seek sex. An increased sexual appetite. Until that craving is stymied. Which will be never because what Mesa did isn't chemical, its genetic.

I agree with you that increased libido causes (actually, is essentially defined as) an increased appetite for sex. I disagree with your repeated implications that this increased appetite causes sexual frustration or mental or emotional stress. There is nothing inherently unhealthy about an increased libido.

And normally SWM, I would agree with you. Certainly if contained on Earth. But altering, increasing, the libido genetically represents, IMHO, much too radical a change to not entertain the side effects that I posit. A completely new paradigm is created. It is the genetic part that invites my teeth, and I can't let it go. You seem to be considering only a natural increase in libido, not that which is affected at the genetic level. In my own head it's akin to turning humans into prolific breeders. Tigers, rats have it as part of their genetic code. You seem to be projecting normal human tendencies on an abnormal human. There is a complete paradigm shift.

Not that anyone asked for it, but here's my opinion.

Since Mesa genetically engineered an increased libido into its sex slaves, then that means that the slaves were "born" with it already in place. It's as completely natural to them as the "normal" amount of libido is to anyone who *wasn't* genetically engineered for high libido.

It's not like the slaves just suddenly woke up one day ten times as horny as they were before they went to bed. Therefore, they wouldn't be "suffering" from their increased libido, because to them, it's normal.

Don't forget that even normal humans have a wide range of levels of libido, and just like Anton falls on one of the ends of the curve for strong humans (making him stronger than genetically enhanced scrags), so also must many humans have an even higher libido than those who have been *designed* to have a high libido. Occasionally, that results in things like rape, but for the most part, normals can keep themselves under control. I don't see why it would be any different for an engineered sex slave.

cthia wrote:

SWM wrote:I agree with you that increased libido causes (actually, is essentially defined as) an increased appetite for sex. I disagree with your repeated implications that this increased appetite causes sexual frustration or mental or emotional stress. There is nothing inherently unhealthy about an increased libido.

And normally SWM, I would agree with you. Certainly if contained on Earth. But altering, increasing, the libido genetically represents, IMHO, much too radical a change to not entertain the side effects that I posit. A completely new paradigm is created. It is the genetic part that invites my teeth, and I can't let it go. You seem to be considering only a natural increase in libido, not that which is affected at the genetic level. In my own head it's akin to turning humans into prolific breeders. Tigers, rats have it as part of their genetic code. You seem to be projecting normal human tendencies on an abnormal human. There is a complete paradigm shift.

I guess we will just have to disagree. I don't see it as a paradigm shift. There is nothing in the text to suggest that Mesan sex slaves have a libido higher than the upper range of modern humans. Yes, it is elevated relative to the average. But libidos in humans already vary by a huge range. I expect that the sex slaves are simply at the high end, not anything unusual. So what if Mesa tried to genetically program it? That is already part of human genetics. They haven't done anything that doesn't already exist in the genome. And a large part of the Mesan program for inducing the libido is undoubtedly social and mental programming, just as it is with normal humans.

I think you are assuming too much of the Mesan geneticists. <shrug>

SWM wrote:I agree with you that increased libido causes (actually, is essentially defined as) an increased appetite for sex. I disagree with your repeated implications that this increased appetite causes sexual frustration or mental or emotional stress. There is nothing inherently unhealthy about an increased libido.

cthia wrote:
And normally SWM, I would agree with you. Certainly if contained on Earth. But altering, increasing, the libido genetically represents, IMHO, much too radical a change to not entertain the side effects that I posit. A completely new paradigm is created. It is the genetic part that invites my teeth, and I can't let it go. You seem to be considering only a natural increase in libido, not that which is affected at the genetic level. In my own head it's akin to turning humans into prolific breeders. Tigers, rats have it as part of their genetic code. You seem to be projecting normal human tendencies on an abnormal human. There is a complete paradigm shift.

swm wrote:
I guess we will just have to disagree. I don't see it as a paradigm shift. There is nothing in the text to suggest that Mesan sex slaves have a libido higher than the upper range of modern humans. Yes, it is elevated relative to the average. But libidos in humans already vary by a huge range. I expect that the sex slaves are simply at the high end, not anything unusual. So what if Mesa tried to genetically program it? That is already part of human genetics. They haven't done anything that doesn't already exist in the genome. And a large part of the Mesan program for inducing the libido is undoubtedly social and mental programming, just as it is with normal humans.

I think you are assuming too much of the Mesan geneticists. <shrug>

Thanks for your candid response, your slant on things and mostly for the intelligent exchange. How damn refreshing! Actually, I hope you are right, my concern is for the sex slaves themselves, because if I am right, what a horrid punishment visited upon them. If you are right, whew!, I can breathe a sigh of relief.

You gave me a laugh at your "I think you are assuming too much of Mesan geneticists" line. That was my initial thought when responses began in the thread.

Someone in an earlier post, I paraphrase, sex is 90% in the head and 10% in the gonads. But Mesa wants to change those numbers, perhaps even reverse them, IMHO. It just seems to me that playing around with the human genome trying to specifically effect changes on human sexual urges would be a very hit-n-miss proposition, because so much of human sexuality is in the head, in the psyche, in our experiences and relationships and are shaped by humanity's many faceted fantasies of what we indeed find sexually stimulating. Start playing around with the genes and you might end up with a human with a kink for_______. I think readers can fill in the blank here. We only have to review a few of humanity's most perverse and odd sexual kinks, and they were not engineered. From BDSM to leather to chains to shoes to autoerotic asphyxiation to bestiality...

To borrow your phrase, I think it asking too much of Mesa's geneticists to not screw (pun intended) something up even more.

You and I may disagree. Yes! That's what debates are all about. But it is disagreement based on sound principles, facts and persuasion and possibly the shape of one's own morals, scruples and values. It is not disagreement born of tainted respect. The everpresent 'I disagree with you because I don't like you' aspect of it. To disagree for the sake of disagreeing.

This is why I totally enjoy your exchanges!

Obviously, I am nowhere near qualified to give this topic its just dessert. However, I'd be overjoyed to sit in on said debate of several geneticists who also happen to be Honorverse fans.

I'll save a seat for you.

Again, thanks.