I actually don’t quite agree with that. I think how you visualize is also relevant. @begbert2 gave one way that visualizing someone naked might not really be something they do, even if they are fleetingly curious.
I’m a similar, but not quite the same. My visual imagination just isn’t super detailed by default. It takes effort for me to see much. So I also don’t automatically do it just because I’m curious.
Even when I am checking someone out, I don’t tend to think of them naked. I check them out in what they’re currently wearing.
And I find I actually can’t do what @Thudlow_Boink asked with the beard. I literally just looked at someone with a beard, who I’ve seen with it shaved off, and I found I just couldn’t imagine what they looked like. All that happened was that I visualized that image of Abraham Lincoln without a beard. I also find that I am always taken aback by how different someone looks without a beard if I’ve not see then without it.
It makes me wonder: maybe the friends who took offense in the OP also both don’t find it to happen automatically when they are curious. Heck maybe even asking the question isn’t enough to make them do it because they’re trying not to.
If it took a huge amount of effort to do it, then I could see someone thinking you really shouldn’t. I’m not sure I’d agree, but it’s at least a bit more understandable.
Edit: I also can’t do that thing where they tell you to picture the audience in their underwear. At most I can kinda focus on one person and vaguely imagine them in underwear, with basically no detail. To go any further, I’d have to put in so much effort I’d not be able to actually give the speech or whatever.
That’s kinda sweet, but as a woman I’ve imagined other men naked. Not exactly with intent. I might be thinking about how much I appreciate a certain man that I find sort of attractive and then whoops! there it is. And I think it’s fine. What I don’t think is fine is letting people know about it, least of all the person who has been objectified in your mind.
In the case of this party game, it was a damned if you/don’t situation. I’m a terrible liar myself, I’m pretty sure all I would be able to answer with is awkward silence. I can think of one group of my friends where such a question might come up but they would all be amused as hell if one of us answered “yes.”
A person could have no problem with all sorts of “raunchy” stuff but still be creeped out by one of their friends thinking of them or their spouse naked. Even if they thought the game might possibly contain such a card - or on drawing it - they would have expected that the answer would of course be “no”.
Yeah, regarding this, I don’t evaluate any woman I’ve just met as a “sex partner” because I don’t consider that as a possible outcome. It would be like assessing other planets for their viability as vacation destinations.
Which is not to say I don’t recognize that a woman is attractive, curvaceous, or whatever. I suppose you could call that assessing their sexual viability. However when I do this I don’t need to visualize them without clothes - there’s nothing about the specific hidden details that effects their viability - unless they’re hiding everything about their physique, like they’re hiding in a barrel or something.
Also, for the record, that “feral” vs “tame” thing is either slanderous phrasing or a huge excluded middle. I am neither an out-of-control animal always on the prowl or a broken animal brought to heel. (As you can see from my avatar, I’m a three-inch-tall robot.)
At that point I do not agree. If they knew it might contain the card, and then drew it and asked it, then they should have been prepared for any answer. That is the point I think several other posters are making.
Also, if the other questions were of the type where this one would be expected to exist, I can’t imagine there aren’t more questions of a similar nature.
Yes, you are! So am I, so don’t leave in a huff. (You can leave in a minute and a huff. )
Speaking of ‘old,’ I was young at a time when co-ed skinnydipping was far from unusual. I still have friends whose wives I saw naked back in the day, but that was decades ago.
Several years ago (also having to do with being old; we’ll get to that), a couple my wife and I knew used to host frequent Texas Hold’em parties. At some point, they had a sizable hot tub installed on their back deck, and the host’s suggestion was that, one of these times, those of us in the poker party should adjourn to the hot tub afterwards.
Back in my younger days, of course, the people I was skinnydipping with were anywhere from college age to early 30s, the women were definitely worth looking at, and they guys were in good enough shape that while they didn’t add anything to the view from my perspective, they didn’t subtract anything either.
But this more recent group was in their late 40s to early 60s, and mostly not in particularly good shape. There was only one woman there that I’d have particularly wanted to see how she looked in a bathing suit, let alone naked, and I’d have paid good money not to see any of the guys there without their clothes - I have maybe an average-looking body, but it was pretty obvious that mine was easily the most attractive male body there.
The host couple divorced before any definite plans for a poker-and-hot-tub night materialized (it also never became clear whether the host was hoping for nudity rather than merely bathing suits, which was just as well), and believe me, that was fine with me.
Exactly - and I don’t blame you for your thoughts, after all, my wife said it happened to her instead. But the moral element, in the sense of doing harm, is possible if your thoughts are leaked, which can be done unintentionally. So some risk of moral harm via thought, at least unless you have a good poker face.
And again, I do know some guys who see no moral harm in letting their thoughts on their faces. They often take pride in it, and become defensive if you call them out on it. A lot of ‘you can’t judge me by my thoughts’ to which I always respond “no, I’m judging you on your actions”. It can be a gray area of both intent, and a judgement call (although a leer in my opinion is pretty obvious) - but it does blur the line between thoughts and deed.
No. Male and I don’t either. I do admit to occasional … unshared unvoiced appreciation … of some people. Inclusive of their physiques. Inappropriate objectivication no doubt. But that does not entail imagining them without clothes. Or fantasies.
I don’t know about the deeper question concerning the morality of it, but I don’t at all. Not because of any moral superiority or whatever, but because I physically can’t.
I didn’t even know people could actually imagine things until I read about aphantasia and realized that I’m in the the minority who actually can’t.
Is it morally wrong if one often finds most people more attractive when they are wearing some clothing? I can’t say I’ve ever really pictured someone’s spouse naked.
Which is why my Puritan antecedents thought that novels and fiction were immoral.
Mathew 5:27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; 28 but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.*
On the other hand, my parents were fundamentalists, not puritans: they thought that there were a few things that defined if you were christian or not, and “imagining naked people” was not on that list.
I didn’t have to think about it, I saw my wife’s best friend naked. I stopped by her house to pick up something for my wife. The friend’s husband let me in the house to wait for the friend, she was taking a shower. She did not know I was there and came out of the bathroom naked. It took her about 5 seconds before she saw me. She turned and took off down a hall. Her husband didn’t see what happened, he was in the kitchen. Nothing has been said about it between us and I said nothing to my wife.
I think the whole “evaluating as a sex partner” thing is mostly subconscious and perhaps not the correct way to phrase it. I don’t think I’m “feral” but there are certain body parts I will look at automatically, there is no thinking involved.
I had forgotten some people literally can’t visualise anything. I don’t think I’m very good at it, I’d certainly have to put effort in to imagine someone naked, which makes it seem quite different compared to someone for whom it happens easily and maybe without even trying.
I agree with those who said that it’s dwelling on the idea or fantasising about someone inappropriate that’s bad, not merely having an attraction.
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